Man accused of Charlotte body-dumping won’t get a plea deal, second judge rules
Mecklenburg District Attorney Spencer Merriweather’s prosecutors have twice offered a plea deal to a man involved in the mysterious disappearance of Andy Tench.
D’Shaun Robinson last year said he dumped an unconscious Tench in a dumpster before stealing his car and wallet to go on a shopping spree. Police say they think Tench was killed, but prosecutors say they don’t have enough evidence to charge Robinson with murder. They don’t have Tench’s body.
Robinson faces five felonies: concealment of a death, identity theft, two counts of financial card theft, financial card fraud and car theft. On Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Kyle Huggins offered to drop several of those charges and asked a judge to sentence Robinson only for concealment of death, identity theft and an unrelated second-degree burglary charge from a previous case.
The three charges carry a maximum sentence of 118 months.
Huggins said the district attorney’s office was asking for as little as 17 months.
If the judge had accepted the plea, Robinson, who has served nearly 12 months in jail, could have been released before October.
“You’re being offered a deal with minimal time and we are supposed to call this justice?” Natasha Newman, Tench’s sister, said to Mecklenburg Superior Court Judge George Bell while reading aloud a letter directed to Robinson in court Tuesday. “What you’ve done is not OK, and a little bit of jail time will not be enough.”
Bell took 10 minutes to read through other family members’ letters before calling Huggins and Robinson’s attorney, Adam Hauser, into a conference room. After returning to his seat, he announced he didn’t “feel comfortable” with the plea and asked Merriweather’s office to withdraw it and consult again with Tench’s family.
Prosecutors offered Robinson the same minimal deal last month.
Superior Court Judge Craig Collins from neighboring Gaston county also rejected it after Tench’s friends and family — his mother, sister and aunts — submitted and read aloud letters underlining the effect Tench’s disappearance and apparent death have had. In their eyes, Robinson is responsible for both. They want a trial.
Andy Tench’s Charlotte disappearance
Robinson last year told police he and Tench met at Bar 316, a now-closed LGBTQ+ bar in SouthEnd. He said he “panicked” when he found Tench unconscious and threw Tench’s body in a dumpster behind a Charlotte-area hotel.
That dumpster was empty when police searched it. Workers at the Anson County Landfill, the next stop for the dumpster’s contents, told police that 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.
“He didn’t just die,” said Tench’s mother, Tracie Blanton, when speaking to Judge Collins in March. “[Robinson] threw him away like a piece of trash. ... He hid him from us and we can have no closure.”
Mecklenburg DA must redo plea deal
In an interview Tuesday, Tench’s sister said her experience with Huggins, the prosecutor, had been “terrible.”
As she spoke outside a Mecklenburg courtroom, Huggins walked by a group of 11 of Tench’s family and friends. He did not acknowledge them until Tench’s aunt yelled out “thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said, without turning back, before entering the courtroom next door.
