Police continue investigation into 3 deadly shootings over 48 hours

CHARLOTTE — The city of Charlotte has been hit by three deadly shootings in just under 48 hours.

The first happened on Friday night at the Wendy’s off of W.T. Harris Boulevard when an employee shot and killed his coworker. After that, a deadly shooting in a neighborhood off Park Crossing Drive in south Charlotte left one woman dead. Hours later, and just a few miles away another shooting off Baltimore Avenue killed a man.

One of the murders has been solved, but the other two cases remain wide open, leaving detectives wondering whether the man shot and killed at the Southside homes was the intended target.

Officers with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department swarmed the neighborhood near Baltimore Avenue where 30-year-old Maurice Moore had been shot. MEDIC took him to the hospital where he later died from his injuries early Sunday morning.

Channel 9 veteran crime reporter, Glenn Counts, spoke with a friend of the victim who did not want to be named. They shared their shock with Counts at the loss of Moore as the two had just seen each other the Sunday before the shooting.

“It’s heartbreaking, really, and truly it’s heartbreaking it really is and I’m just sad because I just talked to this young man last Sunday,” the friend said.

According to the friend, Moore was a kind and caring person, who was an innocent victim caught in the crossfire.

“He was a beautiful person, he was he cared for everybody, he tried to help everybody and he was just an innocent bystander just sitting outside on the porch and the shooting occurred,” the friend told Counts.

Over on Park Crossing Drive, two people, a man, and a woman, were shot inside of a car on Saturday evening. The man survived, but the woman died from her injuries at the hospital.

Police have not said what the motive behind the shooting was as they continue to search for suspects.

The case that makes the least sense out of the three is the murder at the north Charlotte Wendy’s on Friday night. The victim has been identified as 19-year-old J’Karri Anderson a high school graduate. The suspect was 21-year-old Christopher Franks.

The two were coworkers and several of Anderson’s family members, who also work at the same Wendy’s location, were at the restaurant when the shooting happened. According to the family, there was no conflict between Anderson and Franks.

The victim’s aunt says Franks became angry after being given his work assignment and then tried to pull out a gun. Multiple workers were able to restrain him until they believed he was calm. Once they released Franks, he began waving his gun causing employees to scatter and flee the restaurant; but Anderson fell as he was running out the back door that’s where Franks shot and killed him.

“It really needs to stop, I mean what can we do,” a friend of the victim told Counts.

While police have not verified the family’s account of the incident, they are heartbroken as they begin to prepare the funeral for a young man whose life was taken too soon.

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