CHARLOTTE — A 14-year-old boy will spend between 16 and 20 years in prison after he killed a 20-year-old woman in west Charlotte last year, but some neighbors are questioning whether or not the sentence was just.
Channel 9 Crime Reporter Hunter Sáenz spoke with those neighbors who remember the shooting vividly. They didn’t want to show their face, but they didn’t mince words on whether justice was served.
“I remember coming home from work and the police were everywhere down here, they had cars in front of my house,” a neighbor told Channel 9.
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Emily Alvarez’s car came to a stop on Vinton Street in west Charlotte after she was shot in February of 2025. Her car crashed into an abandoned home.
“They were out of the cars with guns and they were telling people to stay in their homes,” a neighbor said.
Witnesses told us the suspect, Jabari Walker, ran off behind nearby apartments. He was later arrested.
Walker was 13 years old at the time of the crime. He recently pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
Court records say Walker told fellow gang members that he planned to rob Alvarez during a drug deal.
Now, he’ll spend at least 16 years in prison.
“Hopefully, it sends a good message to him that you can’t do these things,” one neighbor told Sáenz.
But others in this neighborhood don’t believe justice was served.
“I think if you take a life, you give a life. That’s my true feeling about it,” a neighbor told Channel 9. “You killed someone and their life was ended, yours should as well.”
Before his arrest, Walker ran off and broke into a 62-year-old woman’s house. He then stole her car keys and drove off with her car before being caught up in Cabarrus County.
Walker is currently in custody in the North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections. His earliest possible release date is in March of 2041.