‘I’m devastated’: Mom left with unanswered questions after son dies in jail

CHARLOTTE — The Mecklenburg County Jail is making changes after a mother came to Channel 9 with questions about her son’s death.

Earlier in May, Karon Golightly’s mother was shocked to learn he died while behind bars, hours after their virtual visit. Golightly was at the jail on federal and local robbery charges.

His mother’s argument isn’t with the charges. She said he was there awaiting trial and regardless of the outcome, he shouldn’t be dead.

“I’m devastated,” Lekisha Golightly said.

Lekisha Golightly said she is struggling to make sense of something that doesn’t add up for her: How her 20-year-old son died in jail.

“How could this happen? How?” she asked.

Lekisha Golightly said two weeks ago, she talked to her son from the Mecklenburg County Jail via video chat. She said he was joking and laughing with family members. There was nothing unusual about him.

“This particular night he did say, ‘Whew, I miss you guys,’” she said.

The next morning, jail staff arrived at her Gastonia home to tell her that her son was dead.

“All I could say is, ‘No. No, that can’t be right,’” Lekisha Golightly said.

She said she was not notified when her son was taken to the hospital and didn’t get to see him to identify his body until it arrived at the funeral home days later.

“We do understand that they want more answers, and they have a lot of questions,” Mecklenburg County Sheriff Gary McFadden told Channel 9′s Ken Lemon.

McFadden said it was important to isolate the body so SBI agents can determine how Golightly died.

“That body has the ability to produce evidence and we want that evidence so we want it preserved,” McFadden said.

He said it’s standard procedure for SBI to investigate a death like this, which takes time. McFadden said that won’t change, but what can change is how families in cases like this are informed.

After talking to Golightly’s mother, he said he plans to have a trained officer assigned to inform and assist families through the process.

“It doesn’t take an act of Congress. It doesn’t take a law to do this. It’s going to be a policy change,” he said.

The sheriff said he has already started working on making those changes, but it could still take months to get a complete autopsy with toxicology reports and for the SBI to figure out how he died.

Karon Golightly is one of two men in the Mecklenburg County Jail who died in May. Preliminary reports show the other man died by suicide.

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