From News14.com
9/26/09 10:25 A.M.
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CHARLOTTE – Charlotte-Mecklenburg police are investigating the details of a break-in turned shooting that happened Friday morning in the university area.
Police say a suspect was trying to break into a university area home when the homeowner shot him.
It happened around 3:30 a.m. on Glen Luce Avenue. Officers say the homeowner heard a noise, went to his garage and fired shots.
The suspect ran off, but police say he was hurt. They are still investigating.
POSTED: 7:57 am EDT September 25, 2009
UPDATED: 2:29 am EDT September 26, 2009
NEW EAGLE, Pa. — A New Eagle man was assaulted with a baseball bat at his home Friday morning before firing shots and killing his attacker.
Joseph Gallick received a knock on the door of his Pine Top Estates mobile home on Applewood Drive at about 2 a.m.
Gallick grabbed his handgun before answering the door, police said.
Gallick was told by Cole James MacFarlane that someone was “messing” with his truck parked outside, police said.
When Gallick went to investigate, another man, identified as William Eyles, hit him with a baseball bat, police said.
Gallick fired at Eyles, striking him in the chest, police said.
Eyles, 25, of Monongahela, was flown to a Pittsburgh-area hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
MacFarlane, 25, faces several charges, including homicide and attempted robbery.
Monday, September 07, 2009
From News Channel 36: A teenager was shot and a pregnant teen was trampled during a party in east Charlotte, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police say.
It happened around 12:39 a.m. Monday at the Machu Picchu Restaurant and Lounge on Independence Boulevard near North Sharon Amity Road.
Officers tell NewsChannel 36 that the restaurant was rented out for a party for 16- to 18-year-olds at the time. A fight started inside the restaurant and moved outside where the shots were fired.
According to police, a teen who was an innocent bystander was shot in the leg. He was transported to Presbyterian Hospital by private vehicle. His injuries are not life-threatening.
A pregnant teen fell to the ground and was trampled during the shooting as a crowd tried to run back inside the restaurant, police say. She was transported to the hospital as a precaution.
No arrests have been made so far. If you know anything about this case, you’re asked to call police or Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600.
FORT MILL —
A father and his son were watching TV together when someone shattered their glass sliding door.
That’s when the Fort Mill dad put his toddler-age son in a closet, retrieved a gun and confronted a man. Then the inevitable happened.
“The homeowner fired his weapon,” Capt. Bryan Zachary of the Fort Mill Police Department said.
No one was hurt during that shooting, Zachary said.
The incident, which occurred last Wednesday night, shook the Sugar Creek Crossing homeowner.
“It was one of the worse things I’ve ever done in my life,” the 24-year-old homeowner said of the shooting when he was reached the next day. “I never hope to be put in that situation again.”
The Fort Mill Times does not identify crime victims unless they request it.
Father, son time interrupted Around 8 p.m. Aug. 18, the homeowner and his son, who is less than 2 years old, were watching TV in a bedroom.
“The homeowner heard a crash,” Zachary said. “He dialed 911, placed the child in the bedroom closet and retrieved his weapon.”
Then the homeowner made his way to his living room, where he came face-to-face with an intruder, who allegedly broke out one of two glass sliding doors, the homeowner and Zachary said.
The homeowner told police that the intruder was moving from the kitchen to the living room area, according to a report from the Fort Mill Police Department.
“The only thing that was going through my mind was my son’s safety,” the homeowner said. “He’s my first and only.”
So, the homeowner issued a warning that he was armed, Zachary said.
The report notes that the homeowner yelled to the suspect that he had a gun. It also notes the homeowner told the suspect to leave while pointing the gun at him.
“He gave him (the intruder) fair warning to leave,” Zachary said.
But the intruder did not leave.
“The suspect turned and took a couple steps toward the homeowner,” Zachary said.
According to the report, the homeowner noticed “something black in color in the suspect’s hand.” The report does not identify that object.
“The suspect had some object in his hand, and the homeowner perceived it to be a weapon and felt threatened,” Zachary said.
“The weapon was fired and (the bullet) struck an area of the wall near where the suspect was standing,” Zachary added.
Authorities did not reveal what type of weapon the homeowner used or how many times he fired it, citing the ongoing investigation. However, a police report notes that the man “retrieved his pistol.” That weapon also is identified as a gun in the same report.
The suspect fled the house and ran into a nearby wooded area bordering the homeowner’s residence. That area was later probed by a police dog and its handler.
“They tracked back into the wooded area for a considerable distance,” Zachary said.
Authorities were not able to find a suspect. If caught and convicted, the man faces a first degree burglary charge that carries a 15-year to life jail sentence, Zachary said.
The burglary, Zachary noted, was not the norm.
“Obviously, it shows desperation on the part of the suspect in that this is a time of the day when people are home from work and settling in for the evening,” Zachary said. “The 911 call came in at 8:18. It was not dark outside. That’s kind of an unusual time for someone to make that type of attempt. There were neighbors home at that time.”
And at one home along Sugar Creek Crossing, an unsuspecting father took a stand to protect his home and son from an intruder.
“My main thought was not to let him get past me,” the homeowner said. “I was raised to take care of myself. I took the measure to do that.”
Anyone with information about the man is asked to call the Fort Mill Police Department at 547-2022 or Crime Stoppers of York County at 1-877-409-4321.
From the Charlotte Observer of 9-1-09
Written by Christopher D. Kirkpatrick
No one was hurt in latest of recent home invasions, but bandits still at large took cash and valuables.
A father and his two toddlers were threatened at gunpoint Sunday afternoon inside their northeast Charlotte residence – another of several broad-daylight home invasions reported to police this summer.
The father told Charlotte-Mecklenburg police two men with handguns broke into his Fairstone neighborhood home in the Derita community, said CMPD Sgt. Jim Wilson, who is commander over the area.
“They were just in the home, and the suspects came inside and pointed guns and demanded money,” Wilson said.
The suspects seemed to know the 31-year-old father sells shoes out of his car for his job and figured he had cash at home, said Wilson. Even so, the victim didn’t recognize the suspects, he said.
No one was hurt in the robbery, which lasted about five minutes, Wilson said. The men took cash and some valuables. There haven’t been any arrests.
At the time of the robbery, the father, 31, was with his 2-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son. His 38-year-old brother also was in the house, located in the 3000 block of Fairglen Road off West Sugar Creek Road.
The area of starter homes has had three home invasions so far this year, Wilson said, compared to seven over the same period last year.
From the Charlotte Observer of 8-22-09
Written by Steve Lyttle
An alert witness has provided Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police with some help after two men robbed a woman at gunpoint at South Park Mall.
The witness used her cell phone to take a photo as two men drove away from the robbery scene in the mall parking lot.
Police say a woman was leaving the mall and walking to her car when she was approached by two men who forced the victim to get on the ground. The men took the woman’s wallet, police say, and then got into their get-away vehicle.
The car, a 1999 two-door red Honda Civic, was stolen earlier in the day in North Charlotte, police told WCNC, the Observer’s news partner. The car’s N.C. license tag is VTF-8693.
The woman was not physically harmed. Police say anyone with information in the case is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600.
Mecklenburg District Attorney Peter Gilchrist said Friday he won’t charge 76-year-old C.L. McClure in the shooting death of a 15-year-old who police said was part of a home invasion robbery at McClure’s northeast Charlotte house.
Gilchrist told the Observer there was insufficient evidence to refute McClure’s assertion that he was acting in self-defense Aug. 22 when he shot and killed Marcus Fluker.
“It appears from all the credible evidence that Mr. McClure feared for his life,” Gilchrist said in a statement.
McClure told police and prosecutors that after the midday home invasion at his Grier Road house he jumped into his van and drove to a nearby street where he thought the robbers were headed on foot.
He said he intended to shoot out the tires of their getaway car to slow them for police. He found no car, McClure told police, but spotted the group running toward his van from a wooded area.
As they approached, McClure said, he feared Fluker might use an automatic weapon McClure had seen one youth holding during the robbery. McClure then fired his .22-caliber gun from the passenger window, hitting Fluker. Police found the teen dead not far away on Ginger Lane, though they found no gun nearby.
The death highlighted issues around the rights of homeowners to protect themselves and the limits of those rights outside the home.
When a homeowner shoots an intruder, N.C. law allows prosecutors to rule it justified. But McClure drove after the robbers, plunging the case into a gray area, legal experts told the Observer.
“We make decisions based on the facts and not community opinion,” Gilchrist told the Observer.
In the statement, Gilchrist said: “His idea to find the vehicle and try to delay the escape of those who invaded his home did not make him the aggressor nor did that take away his right of self-defense. Mr. McClure believed that his life was in danger and fired in self-defense.”
McClure didn’t return a call Friday and has said he doesn’t want to talk about the incident.
Felicia Fluker, the youth’s mother, couldn’t be reached Friday night. She told the Observer after the shooting that her son, an Independence High freshman, was a good kid who got caught up that day with a bad crowd.
“I hate what happened,” she said. “(McClure) could’ve just called police.”
Three other teens were arrested and charged with second-degree burglary and robbery with a dangerous weapon. Police have identified them as Joseph Graves, 17; Matthew Everett Morgan, 17; and Tahjaue Wiley, 18.
Three defense attorneys who read Gilchrist’s statement on the McClure case said they felt the prosecutor’s decision not to file charges was fair and showed the homeowner had feared for his life.
“When a notorious incident like this takes place people want to think they know all the facts, but they usually don’t,” said Tony Scheer, a Charlotte criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor. “When police and prosecutors decide that they don’t have enough evidence to charge somebody I would hope that the community could accept that they’re trying to do their job in good faith.”
Still, Scheer and other attorneys said the prosecutors’ decision not to file charges should not encourage others to take the law into their own hands.
“I don’t think that’s the message that’s intended here, and hopefully that’s not the message people will take from it,” said Terry Sherrill, a defense attorney and former district and superior court judge.
Prosecutors said Friday that McClure’s wife suffered a heart attack hours after the home invasion and shooting. She is recovering.
The robbers had held her at gunpoint upstairs and bound her husband, who was downstairs, with duct tape. Then they ransacked the home, making off with jewelry, a wallet and two guns.
After they left, McClure broke free, grabbed a gun, and got into his van after watching the thieves head into woods across the street.
According to Gilchrist’s statement: “When McClure found the young men after the robbery, they ran toward his car and he fired a shot in the air to keep them away from him and his auto. But they kept running toward him, some in front and some in back of his car.”
When Fluker passed the vehicle, he began to turn toward McClure. His motions convinced McClure he was about to be shot, Gilchrist stated. McClure fired at Fluker but did not know if he had hit him.
Gilchrist said McClure was the only witness to the shooting and that the physical evidence corroborated what the homeowner told detectives. The DA’s office also said it was clear Fluker was one of the people involved in the home invasion robbery.
“It is the burden of the state in a criminal case to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a charged individual did not act in self-defense,” Gilchrist said in his statement. “The state cannot meet that burden in this case as it appears from all the credible evidence that Mr. McClure feared for his life.”
In a recent similar case, police say Charlotte cab driver Albeno Maywal shot and killed 17-year-old robbery suspect Renaldo Smith this month. Police and prosecutors are still reviewing the case. Smith is the son of former NFL Atlanta Falcon player Reggie Smith. Staff writer Adam Bell contributed.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department Homicide Detectives are conducting a homicide investigation at 3840 Whitehall Dr. in the Freedom Division. The victim has been identified; his name is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.
Shortly before 11:30 pm on September 11, 2009, Freedom Division officers responded to a call advising one male had been shot. When officers arrived on scene, they located the victim lying on the floor inside of the residence suffering from a gunshot wound. The Charlotte Fire Department and Medic arrived on scene and pronounced the victim deceased.
Responding officers immediately began setting up a perimeter around the neighborhood to search for any suspects. As a result of this action several individuals were stopped and identified however; at this time there is no evidence to connect these subjects to the crime. Canine and Air Support responded to assist in the search. At this point, CMPD is still searching for the suspects.
Based on witness statements gathered during the preliminary investigation- an unknown number of suspects forced their way into the residence and shot the victim inside his home.
Homicide, Robbery, Gang and Firearms’ detectives; with the assistance of Freedom and Metro Division officers conducted a neighborhood canvass. Crime Scene Search responded, photographed the scene and collected physical evidence.
Anyone with information about this incident is asked to call 704-432-TIPS and speak directly to a homicide detective. Detective H. McSwain is the lead detective assigned to the case. In addition, you may also call Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600.
August 26, 2009 by ten8
From http://www.ten8.wordpress.com
Published: Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 5:02 p.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 5:02 p.m
Citizens chased and detained a man until he was arrested Friday after police say he was discovered rummaging through the electrical box at a vacant home recently damaged by fire.
The man was discovered just before 2 p.m. Friday stripping copper wiring from inside the residence at 1842 Carolina Beach Road. The house was unoccupied and undergoing repairs after a recent fire, according to spokeswoman Lucy Crockett of the Wilmington Police Department.
A worker returning to the home to continue repairs discovered the intruder, chased and stopped the man near Greenfield Lake with the help of witnesses. They held the man on the ground until officers arrived, Crockett said.
Alonzo Austin, 51, was charged with felony forced breaking and entering, larceny, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of burglary tools. He is being held at the New Hanover County jail on secured bail of $1,100.
– Chelsea Kellner
The East Charlotte Area Patrol 