More than half of Charlotte’s murder suspects had prior charges. Most were dropped.
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A Deadly Year in Charlotte
2019 ended with 107 people in Charlotte killed, the highest number of homicides in a single year for the city since 1993. Charlotte’s homicide rate is the highest it’s been in more than a decade.
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More than half of the roughly 75 people charged with murder in Mecklenburg County in 2019 had prior weapons charges. Prosecutors dismissed most of those charges.
For 13 of those murder suspects, a conviction on an earlier weapons charge — rather than a dismissal — would have put them in prison at the time of the killing.
Prosecutors say they often have to dismiss cases due to insufficient evidence, including witnesses who aren’t credible, who can’t be found or who refuse to testify.
Here are the suspects:
Suspect: Algia Clark
Number of weapons charges: 12
Number dismissed: 9
Number pending: 2
Number guilty: 1
Date of homicide: Aug. 20, 2019
Who he is charged with murdering: 20-year-old A’mari McCaskill
Details: In 2017, prosecutors dismissed Clark’s armed robbery charge, winning a conviction on a lesser charge. Clark got out of prison in November 2018. A month later, he was charged with another robbery. Prosecutors dismissed that charge as well. A conviction on either armed robbery charge would have landed Clark in prison for more than three years. Clark is charged with shooting and killing McCaskill in August.
Suspect: Edward Garner
Number of weapons charges: 6
Number dismissed: 3
Number pending: 3
Date of homicide: Aug. 12, 2019
Who he is charged with murdering: 28-year-old Aiesha Shantel Summers and an unborn child
Details: In 2017, police charged Garner with discharging a weapon into occupied property. A year later, Mecklenburg prosecutors dropped the charge. Had he been found guilty of discharging the weapon, Garner likely would have been sentenced to at least 20 months in prison because he had prior felony convictions — a factor that judges must consider in sentencing.
Suspect: Eddie Doh
Number of weapons charges: 13
Number dismissed: 2
Number guilty: 2
Number pending: 9
Date of homicide: July 10, 2019
Who he is charged with murdering: 48-year-old Darnell Harris
Details: In 2011, police found 17-year-old Aerial Patterson dead in front of a vacant home in southwest Charlotte. Doh, then 23, was charged with first-degree murder. In 2013, prosecutors dismissed the murder charge and Doh was found guilty of accessory after the fact to first-degree murder. He was released from prison in January about five months before being charged with killing Harris.
Suspect: Richard Grier
Number of weapons charges: 10
Number dismissed: 2
Number guilty: 5
Number not guilty: 1
Number archived: 1
Number pending: 1
Date of homicide: May 18, 2019
Who he is charged with murdering: 32-year-old Andrew Tyrelle Allen
Details: By 2013, Grier had been convicted of 19 felonies. Those convictions would have increased his prison time if he had been convicted in 2013 of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injury.
Suspect: Donte Clements
Number of weapons charges: 7
Number dismissed: 5
Number guilty: 1
Number pending: 1
Date of homicide: May 25, 2019
Who he is charged with murdering: 26-year-old Monica Smith
Details: Clements has been charged with more than 40 crimes since 2006. Prosecutors dismissed two armed robbery charges against Clements in 2018. Had he been convicted on either of those charges, he would have been imprisoned for more than four years. On May 25, 2019, police found Smith inside a west Charlotte apartment, suffering from a gunshot wound that proved fatal. Police charged Clements and two other suspects in the killing.
Suspect: Javier Concepcion-Perez
Number of weapons charges: 6
Number dismissed: 4
Number pending: 2
Date of homicide: May 1, 2019
Who he is charged with murdering: 22-year-old Donqwavias Davis
Details: In 2017, prosecutors dismissed three armed robbery charges against Concepcion-Perez. Had he been convicted on any of those charges, he would have been sentenced to more than three years in prison. In May, police arrested him in connection with the fatal shooting of Davis at an apartment complex near UNC Charlotte.
Suspect: Corey Vega
Number of weapon charges: 9
Number dismissed: 6
Number guilty: 1
Number pending: 2
Date of homicide: Nov. 17, 2019
Who he is charged with murdering: 27-year-old Ebony Harrison
Details: Mecklenburg prosecutors dismissed armed robbery charges against Vega in 2017 and in October 2019. In November 2019, police said Vega shot and killed Harrison on the 5100 block of Reagan Drive in northeast Charlotte.
Suspect: Juan Escalante
Number of weapon charges: 8
Number dismissed: 2
Number pending: 6
Date of homicide: April 30, 2019
Who he is charged with murdering: 42-year-old Domingo Venancio-Tapia
Details: Less than a month after Mecklenburg prosecutors dismissed an armed robbery charge, Escalante and a co-defendant were charged with murdering Venancio-Tapia outside a South Boulevard restaurant. Two days after the shooting, police took Escalante into custody following an eight-hour SWAT standoff.
Suspect: Khdaius Marshall
Number of weapons charges: 7
Number dismissed: 3
Number guilty: 2
Number pending: 2
Date of homicide: April 28, 2019
Who he was charged with murdering: 30-year-old Tyrena Inman
Details: Two months after prosecutors in Mecklenburg dropped an armed robbery charge, Marshall was charged with shooting and killing Inman in a southwest Charlotte hotel near the Billy Graham Parkway.
Suspect: Anthony Walker
Number of weapons charges: 11
Number dismissed: 9
Number pending: 2
Date of homicide: April 28, 2019
Who he was charged with murdering: 40-year-old Daimeon Terrell Johnson
Details: Walker never went to trial on any of his nine gun charges from 2012 through 2018. All were dismissed. Those charges included three armed robberies in 2017, according to court documents. Had Walker been convicted of any of those armed robbery charges, he would have been incarcerated the day Johnson was shot and killed in Charlotte’s Lincoln Heights neighborhood.
Suspect: Jamarkus Crawford
Number of weapons charges: 12
Number dismissed: 9
Number guilty: 3
Date of homicide: Feb. 20, 2019
Who he was charged with murdering: 52-year-old Titus Campbell
Details: Since 2010, police have charged Crawford with 11 weapons crimes, including felony possession of a firearm last year. Prosecutors dismissed that charge. Had Crawford been convicted, he would have been in prison in February, when he was charged with killing Campbell in west Charlotte.
Suspect: Kaila Carlissa Robinson
Number of weapons charges: 5
Number dismissed: 1
Number guilty: 1
Number pending: 3
Date of homicide: Jan. 12, 2019
Who she was charged with murdering: 38-year-old Jermaine Moore
Details: In 2017, Mecklenburg County prosecutors dismissed Robinson’s armed robbery charge. Less than a year and a half later, Robinson was charged with murder.
Suspect: Tyler Jordan Hokes
Number of weapons charges: 16
Number dismissed: 7
Number guilty: 2
Number pending: 7
Date of homicide: Jan. 1, 2019
Who he is charged with murdering: 53-year-old Carnis Ferdinand Poindexter
Details: Hokes was charged with armed robbery last October. But prosecutors dismissed that charge in December — less than a month before Poindexter’s death.
This story was originally published January 15, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
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