CMPD provides few details about recent homicides, says police are seeking justice
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police have reported eight homicides in the past two weeks but have offered few details.
Police Lt. Kevin Pietrus at a biweekly media briefing Friday morning said he didn’t have any new information on several cases.
Those cases include:
The death of 17-year-old Fate Brannon, who was allegedly shot and killed March 29 by 28-year-old Marcus Dahn inside of a Jack in the Box restaurant on the corner of Hoskins Road and Brookshire Boulevard in northwest Charlotte. Dahn was arrested and was being held in the Mecklenburg County jail.
A man who died from injuries he sustained during a fight Wednesday at his apartment complex on Forestbrook Drive. His name has not been released.
The death of 36-year-old Cordarrell Houston, who was shot and killed March 26 in his home on Toddville Road in west Charlotte by someone who was outside.
Asked about whether or not the majority of these recent homicides were random acts, or involved the suspects knowing the victims, Pietrus said most crimes involve the parties knowing each other.
”Most of the time, we see that parties are known to each other, and they’re generally not random acts of violence between people that are unknown to each other.”
In the case of Brannon, Pietrus said there were no new updates, and that it is still an active investigation. Court records said a second suspect was involved. Asked if there was any information about the second suspect, and if Dahn knew Brannon, Pietrus said he wasn’t “aware of those details.”
Similarly there were no new updates about the Forestbrook Drive apartment homicide. No arrests have been made.
But because the homicide occurred in an apartment complex, there were some witnesses CMPD was able to speak to, he said, and potentially more they haven’t gotten in contact with yet.
There were also no new updates about the homicide investigation into Houston’s death.
On Saturday, CMPD announced Maiseo Caldwell, 19, and Quavon Strother, 18, were arrested and charged in connection to Houston’s death.
The two teens were charged with, among other things, first-degree murder and first-degree burglary.
Pietrus was asked how CMPD planned to address the recent shootings into homes.
He said that most of the time, like other crimes, people involved know each other.
When CMPD gets involved, Pietrus said the department investigates each case and its facts, while also investigating them as a part of a bigger picture.
The goal is to see which cases are related to one another, what the motives are, and whether it’s retaliatory.
Pietrus said CMPD is concerned about each homicide that occurs.
He said that a large number of homicides occur from firearms, but not all.
“It doesn’t always look the same. It doesn’t always happen in the same area of town. It doesn’t always go down the same way, and so there’s a wide range of means and methods and locations that these types of incidents occur,” Pietrus said. “All of them, at the end of the day, are the same in the sense that somebody has lost their life. And all of them are the same in the sense that we’re going to do everything we can to seek justice for that victim.”
