The week began with the report of the capture of an armed fugitive wanted for murder in Mount Airy. Michael Puckett is accused of killing one Virginia sheriff’s deputy and wounding another after they came to his home in Fancy Gap, Virginia last Friday for a welfare check. Puckett was apprehended Sunday evening after he rang the doorbell of a rural Mt. Airy home. The Charlotte Observer reported that SBI agents located Puckett using a drone and arrested him on the home’s doorstep. People in the community had been warned to stay in their homes and be on the lookout for a shirtless man in green shorts wearing an orange horse blanket.
More fugitive news. Two men held on drug and gun charges escaped from the Vance County Detention Center on Wednesday. WRAL reports that the men, Michael Miles and Lishawn Knott, are considered armed and dangerous. WITN has video footage of the two men making their escape.
Allegations of excessive force. A former officer with the Shelby Police Department has been fired and charged with assault inflicting serious injury following the circulation of a video showing him repeatedly punching a woman in the head during an arrest. The woman who was arrested faces charges of breaking and entering, assaulting a government official, and resisting arrest. Her attorney says she suffers from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and that she was experiencing a mental health episode during the incident. WRAL has the story here.
Mental illness and criminal justice. Issues at the intersection of mental illness and criminal justice have been a focus of the North Carolina General Assembly following the killing last August of Iryna Zarutska, who was stabbed to death on a light rain train in Charlotte. The man charged with killing Zarutska had a documented history of mental illness. Last October, the legislature established the House Select Committee on Involuntary Commitment and Public Safety, charged with studying and making recommendations regarding the intersection of mental health services, involuntary commitment processes, and the safety of the general public. This week, the House passed a bill that originated from that committee.
If enacted, House Bill 1104 (H 1104) would require development of plans to use (1) telehealth for certain mental health evaluations of individuals detained in county jails and (2) mobile crisis units for the first examination in the involuntary commitment process. The bill also calls for, among other things, increased training for involuntary commitment examiners, a plan to address staffing shortages in State-operated behavioral health care facilities, a study of the legal standards governing involuntary commitment and capacity to proceed, and the establishment of a working group to “examine the systemic factors contributing to the prevalent ‘revolving door’ pattern in which individuals cycle repeatedly through arrest, detention, or involuntary commitment, only to be released back into the community without sustained stabilization or support.”’
License plate readers may be here to stay. This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee reported favorably on House Bill 206, a bill that would make permanent the State Bureau of Investigation’s temporary authority to place automatic license plate readers on DOT rights-of-way. The SBI has been operating such readers in connection with local law enforcement agencies since 2023 pursuant to S.L. 2023-151, as amended by S.L. 2024-43. In an April 2026 report to the legislature the SBI Director reported that cameras were currently operational in 140 locations, with another 75 locations pending approval or installation. The New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office leads the pack in the tally of the total number of license plate captures, having recorded more than 35 million. G.S. 20-183.32 provides that data collected by license plate readers may not, absent special authorization, be preserved for more than 90 days. The SBI reports that none of the data collected during the pilot program was kept for longer than 90 days.
License plate readers operate by capturing images of license plates and converting those images into searchable data. The data may include plate number, time, location and, sometimes, a vehicle description. In addition, the readers compare scanned plates against National Crime Information Center (NCIC) databases. If there is a hit, officers receive an alert. The SBI reported numerous incidents in which data captured by readers and these alerts led to a person’s arrest, recovery of a stolen vehicle, or the recovery of a missing person. WRAL reports that opponents of the legislation have raised privacy concerns related to the risk of expanded government surveillance.
Anti-gang bill. In a final bit of legislative criminal law news, a House Judiciary Committee approved an amended version of House Bill 1173, Jaleeyah’s Law, a bill that broadens the definition of a criminal gang and would make it easier to prove that a person is a criminal gang member. The bill also increases the penalty for soliciting gang participation and makes it a crime for a member of a criminal gang to use, carry, or possess a firearm in relation to a violent or drug crime or for a gang member to give a firearm to a juvenile. WRAL reports that the bill is named for 13-year-old Jaleeyah Tune of Goldsboro who was fatally shot in December in what lawmakers say was a gang-related killing. Some have raised concerns that the loosened definitions of what it means to be a gang member could implicate innocent people.
Violence in the breakroom. In my experience, office breakrooms do not bring out the best in people. For starters, everyone wants to use, and no one wants to clean, the appliances. Then there is the concern about people (inadvertently?) consuming food belonging to others. There also is lack of agreement about microwave etiquette, including how much microwave time one individual may appropriately consume and what items should and should not be microwaved in a common space. All that said, I’ve never seen anyone assaulted over breakroom transgressions. Yet that line was allegedly crossed last week in the Myrtle Beach Police Department when a detective pointed his department-issued handgun at a patrolman who had warmed up his fish in the microwave, creating an odor in the office. USA Today has the story, along with a link to the warrant for the detective’s arrest for pointing and presenting a firearm at a person.
On that note, I’ll wish everyone a happy and safe weekend. If you are looking forward to a couple of days off, remember that one of the perks of being at home is that you can microwave whatever you want to – free from the judgment of your colleagues.
