Man accused of killing CATS bus driver won’t face death penalty, prosecutors say
Mecklenburg County prosecutors will not be seeking the death penalty against the Charlotte man charged with fatally shooting a city bus driver in February.
The District Attorney’s Office made the announcement in court Thursday regarding Dru Darian Thavychith, 21, who is accused of opening fire on a Charlotte Area Transportation System (CATS) bus on Feb. 11 and mortally wounding driver Ethan Rivera, 41. Rivera died the next day.
Police said the gunfire near Trade and Graham streets erupted after an episode of road rage.
Thavychith was arrested outside of Kansas City, Missouri, after a two-week, four-state manhunt. He is charged with first-degree murder and shooting into an occupied vehicle. If convicted, he faces mandatory life in prison without parole.
Death penalty cases have become increasingly rare in North Carolina — and especially in Mecklenburg County, the state’s largest local court district.
Prosecutors here officially dropped their last pending capital murder charge on Feb. 10, the day before Rivera was shot. They did so due to the pandemic — and the greater risk of COVID infection in the courtroom given that death-penalty cases can run on for months.
Mecklenburg has four inmates on death row. The most recent went there in 1998.
North Carolina last put someone to death in August 2006.
The last Mecklenburg County inmate executed, Elias Syriani of Charlotte, died by lethal injection in 2005. He was accused of stabbing his wife with a screwdriver almost 30 times while the couple’s 10-year-old son watched.
