Investigators said the victim’s final social media post, family accounts and evidence from a towed car helped build the case.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Police who charged a 37-year-old Charlotte man with murder say his longtime girlfriend was found shot to death early Feb. 15 on Lawton Road, hours after she posted a Snapchat video showing the couple together at a nightclub.
Police identified the victim as 33-year-old Tabulon Debreshea Reece and the suspect as Nicholas Jordan Gandy. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said detectives developed Gandy as a suspect during the first day of the investigation, then arrested him Feb. 16. Court records described Reece and Gandy as longtime partners. The case drew quick attention because investigators said Reece’s final social media post, cellphone location data and physical evidence from a vehicle all helped place Gandy in the hours before her death.
Officers were sent to the 700 block of Lawton Road shortly after 6 a.m. Sunday for a welfare check after a caller reported a woman lying on the ground and not moving. When officers arrived, they found Reece outside and saw what investigators later described as a fatal gunshot wound to the head. Medic personnel pronounced her dead at the scene. By the next day, homicide detectives had identified Gandy as the suspect and obtained a warrant. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said its Violent Criminal Apprehension Team found Gandy on Monday, took him to the Law Enforcement Center for an interview and then turned him over to the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office. He was booked on a murder charge after that interview.
According to the affidavit summarized in court reporting, Reece’s family told detectives she left home Saturday night in her Honda Accord to go out with Gandy. The two were seen together later in a Snapchat story posted around midnight. Investigators said the video showed Reece in the same outfit she was wearing when her body was discovered, and Gandy appeared with her in the clip. Family members told police that the Honda came back to the residence several hours later, but Reece was not inside. Instead, they said, Gandy was driving it. He allegedly told relatives that Reece had his vehicle and that he had hers. Detectives then focused on Gandy’s own car, described by relatives as a gold-colored Lexus sedan with tinted windows. That vehicle was not found with Reece’s body, adding another gap in the timeline that detectives worked to close.
Investigators said cellphone data from Reece’s device placed it both near the area where her body was later found and near the 10000 block of Old Dowd Road during the night and early morning hours. That second location became important when detectives learned Gandy had already come into contact with police there at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday in what authorities called an unrelated incident at an Amazon distribution center. Local reporting said he was arrested there on a trespassing allegation before the homicide charge was filed. Detectives later found that a 2004 Lexus sedan connected to Gandy had been towed from the distribution center parking lot. When police went to the tow yard and searched the car, they reported finding blood inside, a spent cartridge casing on the driver’s side floorboard and an identification card belonging to Gandy hanging from the rearview mirror. Those details, together with the family’s account and the social media video, gave investigators a tighter sequence of events, though public records released so far do not explain a motive or say exactly where prosecutors believe the shooting happened.
The killing unfolded in an area of northwest Charlotte that includes industrial property and warehouse traffic, not a busy nightlife strip. That setting sharpened the mystery in the first hours after Reece was found. Early police statements referred only to a homicide investigation in the Freedom Division and did not identify the victim or explain how she died. By Tuesday, investigators publicly named Reece and Gandy and confirmed that detectives had moved quickly from a welfare call to an arrest. The case also underscored how modern homicide investigations often stitch together routine digital traces with witness statements and physical evidence. In this investigation, detectives appeared to rely on a mix of family interviews, location data from a cellphone, a late-night social media post and what they said they recovered from a towed vehicle. Each piece covered a different part of the timeline: where Reece had been, who had been with her, which car returned to her home and where the suspect surfaced before sunrise.
Even with the arrest, major questions remained unanswered in the public record. Authorities had not publicly described the events inside the nightclub, the route taken after the couple left, the precise time of the shooting or whether anyone else witnessed the moments leading to Reece’s death. Police also had not said whether a firearm had been recovered. Court and police summaries available immediately after the arrest focused on probable cause, not the full theory prosecutors may eventually present. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said the investigation remained active and ongoing, language that usually signals detectives are still collecting surveillance footage, interviews, laboratory testing and other records before later court hearings. Publicly available reports also did not spell out whether prosecutors planned to seek an upgraded charge such as first-degree murder or rely on the existing murder count as the case moves through court. For now, the formal accusation is that Gandy killed Reece after the couple spent part of Saturday night together.
Police statements and local reports gave the case a sharp hour-by-hour structure. Reece was alive and posting on Snapchat around midnight. Gandy was then arrested in an unrelated matter at about 4:30 a.m. on Old Dowd Road, according to court reporting cited by local outlets. Just after 6 a.m., officers answering the welfare call found Reece dead on Lawton Road. By Monday, detectives had developed enough evidence to identify Gandy as the suspect, question him and book him into jail. Police have not publicly released a transcript of that interview or said whether Gandy made any statement after his arrest. They have also not publicly identified the 911 caller who asked for the welfare check. What officials have said, consistently, is that the evidence they gathered in the first 24 hours pointed them to Gandy and supported the murder charge.
For Reece’s family, the timeline laid out by police turned ordinary details from a night out into key pieces of evidence. Relatives told detectives the couple had gone to a club the night before. A video posted in the moment later became part of the investigation. The Honda Accord Reece drove out of the house returned without her. Those details gave detectives a path to follow before they found the Lexus tied to Gandy. In the background of the police work was a simpler fact that remained at the center of the case: a 33-year-old woman was found dead outside in the dark, and her family’s last knowledge of her movements came from a Saturday night outing they believed she had taken with someone she knew well. The charge filed against Gandy does not close that loss, but it moves the case from an early homicide inquiry into the long court process that follows a murder accusation.
Gandy was being held in Mecklenburg County custody after his arrest, and reports at the time said he was being held without bond. A next court date was listed for March 10. As the case proceeds, prosecutors are expected to turn over charging documents and continue reviewing forensic evidence from the vehicle, cellphone records and any surveillance video collected along the route investigators traced. Police said additional information would be released as the investigation develops.