Frezja Baker murder suspect previously shot a man. How did he get out of prison?
Before police charged Lorenza Inman Jr. with murdering his girlfriend this month, he had a long criminal history that included three prior assaults and a shooting, court records show.
Inman, 38, has cycled through jail for years and been convicted of more than 10 crimes. His rap sheet dates back to 2005.
After the state’s appeals court overturned his conviction for attempted first-degree murder in a 2017 shooting, Mecklenburg County prosecutors gave him a plea deal.
Four months after that deal freed him from prison, police charged him with punching a woman in the face. Almost five years later, they charged him with shooting 31-year-old Frezja Baker to death, then leaving her body in a car in a west Charlotte parking lot.
Today, Inman is being held in uptown’s jail without bond.
“As the defendant has a pending case, we’re ethically prohibited from commenting further,” district attorney spokesperson Mike Stolp said in a message when asked why prosecutors gave Inman a plea deal in 2021.
Conviction tossed
At a February 2019 trial in the non-fatal shooting of another man, jurors found that Inman was guilty of attempted first-degree murder, possessing a gun as a felon and assault with a deadly weapon with the intent to kill inflicting serious injury.
Prosecutors convinced the jurors that he followed Sharrieff Pope to a west Charlotte shopping center in April 2017, confronted him, shot him in the chest, then fired several more rounds at him once he hit the ground.
Judge Jesse Caldwell sentenced Inman to 13 to 17 years in prison. But the convictions did not last.
After Inman asked for a review, they were tossed by the state’s Court of Appeals in December 2020. Caldwell had erred when he allowed prosecutors to use a written statement from Pope, as well as an audio recording of police interviewing him, the appeals court found.
(Pope had at first refused to testify, but answered questions after Caldwell ordered him to take the stand.)
“The trial court erred by admitting an out-of-court statement by the victim when the victim was available to testify and did in fact testify,” Appeals Judge Donna Stroud wrote in a December 2020 opinion, adding that Inman was entitled to a new trial.
Plea deal came after nine other convictions
Rather than trying to win at trial again, in March 2021 the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office let Inman take an Alford plea for the assault and gun possession charges. In an Alford plea, a person claims they are innocent but acknowledges that they would likely lose at trial. Legally, they are considered guilty.
As part of the deal, prosecutors dropped other charges: attempted first-degree murder, attempted robbery with a dangerous weapon and discharging a firearm in city limits.
Court records show that Inman had been convicted of nine crimes before his 2019 trial:
- Possessing, selling or buying something with an altered serial number in 2006, as well as possessing up to half an ounce of marijuana.
- Assaulting a female and possessing drug paraphernalia in 2007.
- Assaulting a government employee or official in 2008, as well as being intoxicated and disruptive.
- In 2014, committing simple assault, carrying a concealed gun and possessing marijuana with the intent to sell or distribute it.
In the plea, Inman was sentenced to time already served for the overturned conviction, and he was let out days after the deal, North Carolina Department of Adult Correction spokesperson Keith Acree confirmed.
Parole violation
Just four months after he got out, in July 2021, Inman returned to prison for a parole violation, Acree said.
That time, he was charged with punching a woman in the face.
Security footage at a 7-Eleven showed Inman and a woman walking into the convenience store on July 4, 2021, then arguing, according to a police narrative.
“They started physically fighting and Inman punched (her) in the face,” the narrative said. “Inman then walked out of the store and came back short while later. He then pushed (the woman) which caused her to fall back into shelf which caused deep puncture wound in her left upper arm.”
The narrative said that police department’s Real-Time Crime Center reported that Inman forced the woman into a blue Chevrolet Camaro, and when police arrived, tried to drive out of the parking lot. He drove around police when they turned on their blue lights, according to the narrative, but the woman “jumped out of the car.”
At the hospital for a scratch on his knee, Inman reportedly told police, “Yeah, I f***ed her up,” and “Yeah, I beat her ass, but y’all ain’t got s*** on me.”
Charged with assault on a female and misdemeanor assault inflicting serious injury, he was scheduled for another trial.
Two weeks after the charges were filed, though, the woman dropped them. She wrote in an affidavit that she would not attend court, that she would drop all charges and restraining orders, and that it was all a “misunderstanding.”
A threat from jail
The day he was arrested, Inman called the woman from jail, threatened her and asked that she get him out, according to another arrest warrant from August 2021.
“Throughout the jail calls made by the defendant, he makes specific references and admissions regarding the assault, as well as advising the victim what he would like her to tell authorities about what happened,” another court record filed in October 2024 said.
The threat and the assault cases were consolidated. Inman took Alford pleas to intimidating a witness and habitual misdemeanor assault this October — just a few months before Baker’s death.
Superior Court Judge Louis Trosch sentenced him to 24 months of supervised probation; if he failed it, a suspended sentence of 11 to 23 months in prison would go into effect. Court records say that he had already served 475 days, or 15 months, when Trosch sentenced him.
Given his history of domestic violence, his probation included participating in an abuser treatment program.
Trosch gave Inman a mitigated sentence because he found that Inman “voluntarily acknowledged wrongdoing in connection with the offense to law enforcement officer at an early stage of the criminal process.”
Held without bond
On Dec. 11, Inman violated his probation when Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said that he shot a woman he was dating in the head, left her body in a car and fled about two hours away to southeastern North Carolina.
Frezja Baker had a young son. She was quick to give out hugs, the kind of person who got along with everyone, said her close friend, Tyneshia Johnson.
Chief District Court Judge Roy Wiggins ordered on Dec. 15 that Inman be held in the Mecklenburg County jail without bond. On Monday, another judge handling Inman’s probation violation doubled down on that.
“The court makes findings on record that based on defendant’s current charges and prior record, defendant poses danger to the public and that no bond is warranted pursuant to statutory authority,” Superior Court Judge Donald Cureton Jr. ordered.
Ryan Oehrli covers criminal justice in the Charlotte region for The Charlotte Observer. His work is produced with financial support from the nonprofit The Just Trust. The Observer maintains full editorial control of its journalism.