Just after midnight on Thursday, July 9, 2026, officers in Pineville, North Carolina, pulled into an apartment parking lot and found a mother holding her 5-year-old son. The boy had multiple stab wounds. Less than an hour later, the man police say did it, the child’s own father, was sitting at a Taco Bell about a mile and a half away when he was taken into custody.
Jehaaz-Akil Khaliq Echoles, 31, is charged with first-degree murder. Police have called it a domestic incident, not a random attack. The details that have come out since paint a picture of a night that fell apart in minutes, and of a man who, according to court records, had been through the local jail system again and again before this.
What Happened Inside the Apartment
According to an arrest affidavit, Echoles kicked in the front door of his ex-girlfriend’s apartment at the Sabal Point Apartments on Sabal Park Drive, off Lancaster Highway. He did not live there. His listed address was in south Charlotte, roughly a 20-minute drive away.
Court documents say he went straight into his son’s bedroom and shut the door behind him. The boy’s mother, who is Echoles’ ex-girlfriend, told investigators she heard a commotion and went to open the door. When she did, Echoles ran out of the apartment. She found her son bleeding and unresponsive, with stab wounds to his head, neck, and arms. She called 911. A second child was in the home at the time and was not hurt. You can read the local coverage of the affidavit details here.
Officers Drove the Boy to the Hospital Themselves
Pineville Police Chief Corey Copley said officers arrived in less than a minute after the frantic 911 call came in around 12:10 a.m. There was no time to wait for an ambulance. Officers put the boy in the back of a patrol car and drove him to Atrium Health Pineville themselves.
He did not survive. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.
“It’s very tragic,” Copley said. “When you’re met in the parking lot with something like that immediately before you can get out of your patrol car. You’ve got to put your emotions aside and do the good work that you’re trying to do.” The chief’s account of those first minutes on scene stuck with a lot of people in the area. Officers trained to stay calm still had to carry a dying kindergartner to a car and race him to an ER.
Found at a Taco Bell Near Carolina Place Mall
The part of this story that has stopped people cold is where police found him. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police helped Pineville officers track Echoles down at a Taco Bell on Carolina Place Parkway, right in front of Carolina Place Mall. That is about a mile and a half from the apartment where his son had just been stabbed.
The arrest came together fast, with the two departments working the case side by side. Once he was in custody, Echoles declined to speak with detectives and asked for an attorney, according to the affidavit. He was booked into the Mecklenburg County jail. The distance between the crime scene and the fast food restaurant where he was arrested is short enough to walk. It is the kind of detail that makes an already awful story feel even harder to process.
A Long Paper Trail With the Courts
This was not Echoles’ first run-in with the law, and not his first time booked into that same county jail. Court records show he was convicted in North Carolina of assault on a female tied to an October 2020 incident. He was put on probation for that charge and did not serve prison time.
Since then, his name has come up in the court system repeatedly. He had multiple pending assault-related cases, and he had been accused of assaulting two women this year alone. One affidavit described him throwing car keys at a woman in March, striking her in the face, after he borrowed her car and refused to give it back. Another accused him of beating a woman with a belt. Reports noted he had seven separate mugshots on the jail website dating back to 2023. There was also an active warrant out for his arrest on one of the pending charges at the time of the stabbing.
His First Court Appearance
Echoles appeared in court Thursday for the first time. He hung his head the entire time, never looking up and never saying a word. A public defender was appointed to represent him. He is being held without bond.
Along with first-degree murder, he faces a charge of assault on a female connected to the case. Police have not released a motive. They have only said this was a domestic situation, not something random that could have touched anyone in the neighborhood. His next court date is set for July 30. WSOC’s report on the charges he is facing laid out how the case is moving through the system now.
A Neighborhood That Knew the Family
People who lived in the complex knew the boy and his family. They saw them around all the time. One neighbor described the kids playing football in the parking lot, the kind of ordinary scene that makes what happened feel impossible to square.
“It’s just unsettling and heartbreaking,” one woman who lives there said. “I see them all the time. They’re out here. They’re playing football in the parking lot.” Another neighbor recalled the mother in the parking lot that night. “She’s our neighbor, we see her and her sons all the time. The mother was just out here, crying with the baby in her arms. I didn’t know what was going on; she was just screaming for help.” The raw reaction from neighbors matched what a lot of people felt reading about it from far away.
What Police Are Doing Now
Pineville is a small town in Mecklenburg County, just south of Charlotte. A case like this does not happen there often, and the department has been open about the toll it took on the officers who responded.
Officer Corey Copley said police are staying close to the surviving family. “We’re supporting them 100%,” he said. “We’re also getting them resources as well to help them cope with this.” Bea Cote, who works with a local abuse prevention group, spoke to reporters about warning signs people sometimes miss in relationships that turn controlling. She pointed to control disguised as affection, someone dictating what a partner wears or who they can see. She also said leaving a living situation with someone dangerous takes real planning, and suggested victims talk to victim assistance about options like a restraining order. The full breakdown of the case stays focused on what investigators have confirmed so far.
Where Things Stand
Here is what is confirmed. A 5-year-old boy is dead. His father is charged with his murder and sitting in the Mecklenburg County jail without bond. The mother and a second child in the apartment survived and were physically unharmed. Two police departments worked together to make the arrest within about an hour, ending at a Taco Bell parking lot a short drive from where the boy was killed.
The motive is still unclear, and Echoles has not spoken to police. His criminal record, including a 2020 assault conviction that ended in probation and several open cases involving women, is part of the court file now. His next hearing is July 30. Fox News’ account of the timeline that night lines up with the local reporting on every major point.
There is no clean way to end a story like this. A little boy who was playing football in a parking lot days earlier is gone, and the person accused of killing him was his own dad. The case will now move through the courts, and the officers who carried that child to their patrol car will carry the memory of it a lot longer than any court date.
