NC judge denies plea deal for man accused of dumping body after leaving South End Charlotte bar
The Mecklenburg District Attorney’s Office on Tuesday offered a defendant a plea deal in a case involving the mysterious disappearance of a man celebrating his birthday in Charlotte. But the victim’s family were outraged by the offer, and a Superior Court judge rejected the deal.
The defendant in the case admitted to stealing the unconscious man’s wallet and car, throwing his body into a hotel dumpster and using his bank card to go on a shopping spree.
Police believe Andy Tench was murdered after he went to a Charlotte bar to celebrate his 31st birthday on March 25, according to search warrants.
Defendant D’Shaun Robinson, 26, has not been charged with murder. Robinson’s attorney said Tuesday he believes Tench died of an overdose — an assertion Charlotte police have never before made.
They can’t.
Tench’s body is still missing.
Without a body, police and prosecutors with Mecklenburg District Attorney Spencer Merriweather’s office say they don’t have enough evidence to support a murder charge.
Instead, Robinson was arrested in April on five felonies — concealment of a death, identity theft, two counts of financial card theft, financial card fraud and car theft. He also faced three counts of misdemeanor card theft.
Prosecutors dropped several of those charges in a plea deal and on Tuesday asked a judge to sentence Robinson only for concealing and failing to report a death, identity theft and second-degree burglary. The burglary charge was from a separate case filed months before Tench’s disappearance.
Christian Eidson, Tench’s good friend of 10 years, silently wept in the courtroom — one hand clasping his lips and the other holding his round glasses in his lap — as Robinson appeared in a bright orange Mecklenburg Detention Center uniform.
Robinson was prepared to accept the plea deal for those three charges. He entered guilty pleas. Then Gaston County Judge Craig Collins, who was presiding over the Mecklenburg courtroom, heard statements from Tench’s family.
“It is people like you who should not be allowed to roam the street,” Tench’s sister, Natasha Newman, wrote in a statement to the judge, referring to Robinson. “Your criminal record has shown that multiple times. Had justice been served in the prior case, you would have been in jail, and my brother Andy would still be with us today.”
“I’m just not going to do this,” Collins said after reading Newman’s victim-impact statement.
Newman, along with her mother and seven other family members and advocates, wore shirts with a photo of red-haired Tench softly smiling.
#JusticeForAndy the shirts read.
“He didn’t just die,” said Tench’s mother, Tracie Blanton, when speaking to Collins. “[Robinson] threw him away like a piece of trash... he hid him from us and we can have no closure.”
Andy Tench’s mysterious disappearance
Police connected Robinson to Tench’s disappearance after surveillance footage showed him using Tench’s credit card at Dick’s Sporting Goods and Target in Matthews. He was driving Tench’s 2010 Hyundai Elantra.
When police followed Tench’s phone to Robinson’s home on April 11, he told them he and Tench left Bar 316, a now-closed LGBTQ+ bar in SouthEnd, to have sex — during which Tench died.
Robinson told police he “panicked” and threw Tench’s body in a dumpster behind a Charlotte-area hotel, about a 15-minute drive away. Robinson was under the influence, said his attorney, Adam Hauser, “when he made that poor decision.”
Hauser also told the judge he believed Tench died of an overdose. That claim cannot be confirmed without an autopsy and toxicology report. Those cannot be completed without a recovered body.
The dumpster Robinson said he left Tench in was empty when police searched it. Workers at the Anson County Landfill, the next stop for the dumpster’s contents, told police employees did not see a body.
Despite the Tench family’s pleas and more than 6,000 signatures demanding police search the landfill, police have not done that. They previously said they consulted with experts who determined there is not enough evidence to justify excavation of the site.
The Charlotte Observer previously reported that while searching Robinson’s home, police found a machete-style knife. Robinson, standing near the knife, told police something to the effect of “I hope he is not decapitated,” CMPD investigators wrote in a search warrant. The search warrant provided no further context for that statement.
Blanton, Tench’s mother, said after the hearing that police and prosecutors have more than sufficient evidence to take the case to trial.
Robinson could face 118 months under the law for the offenses he’s charged with; Merriweather’s now-rejected plea deal would have allowed him to serve as little as 23 months.
Merriweather intends to bring the case in front of another judge, spokesperson Michael Stolp said later Tuesday.
This story was originally published March 5, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
