Murder charge dropped against man accused in 2020 shooting of a Charlotte teen
Prosecutors this week dropped a murder charge against a man in connection with the fatal shooting a Charlotte teenager in March 2020.
Christoper Chisholm, 20, was arrested in June 2020 and charged with the murder of 19-year-old Brianna Stephenson, the Observer previously reported.
On March 8, 2020, Stephenson was in the front passenger seat of her Hyundai Sonata while her boyfriend, Jaquavious Royster, drove the car. The couple was at a traffic light at the intersection of Tuckaseegee Road and Freedom Drive when a black Pontiac G6 drove up. One of the three men inside leaned out of the Pontiac’s rear passenger window and fired a gun at the Hyundai multiple times, court records show.
Stephenson was hit three times and died the next day at the hospital.
Surveillance video from nearby businesses matched what witnesses told Charlotte-Mecklenburg police about the shooting, but the images of the shooter were “grainy” and unusable, according to prosecutors from the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office.
The vehicle was traced back to Chisholm, but he denies being involved in the shooting, prosecutors said. The gun has not been found, though it has been used in multiple shootings since Chisholm’s arrest, prosecutors said.
Police found the Pontiac in South Carolina a month later, according to prosecutors.
On Tuesday, prosecutors dropped the charges against Chisholm because witnesses were unable to identify him as “the perpetrator of the crime.”
One Charlotte activist reacted to the witnesses’ inability to identify a suspect.
“It was broad daylight. It was around noon time, there are no witnesses? People need to stop being silent,” community activist Lucille Puckett told WCCB Charlotte on Wednesday.
Chisholm remains at the Mecklenburg County Jail on separate pending charges, including possession of a stolen firearm, robbery with a dangerous weapon and assaulting a government officials, according to county inmate records.
