CHARLOTTE — Mecklenburg County’s District Attorney will no longer seek murder charges against a man who was charged in a deadly shooting in southeast Charlotte in 2017.
Andre Earl Brooks took what is known as the Alford Plea on Thursday, Channel 9′s veteran crime Reporter Glenn Counts learned. The plea allows Brooks to take a guilty plea while claiming to be innocent.
He was accused of killing Kyyri Doggett after shooting him multiple times. The case was set to go on trail on Monday.
Brooks was originally charged with murder, but the charges have been dropped to voluntary manslaughter.
With credit for time served already, Brooks could get out of jail in as little as three years. Doggette’s family told Counts that was not justice. They asked the judge to reject the plea deal but the judge sided with the attorneys.
“I wanted the court to see this is my life sentence, I haven’t even committed a crime,” Sevhn Robinson, Kyyri’s mother, said. “To be hunted down like my son was and given 6 years to get to this, it’s ridiculous.”
Sevhn and her husband Charles are community activists who have been fighting against street violence. They think the decision sends the wrong message.
“It’s very, very tough to walk away today with what we got today, the way things were handled,” Charles said.
Prosecutors cited a variety of reasons for the new charges, but the main one is that their key witness was not reliable. The shooter was covered in a hoodie, mask, and pants, so the video was useless. The shooter’s handgun was also never recovered.
“My client already spent 6 years in custody behind bars, so my client has been away from his family for six years without being found guilty of anything,” Kenneth Snow, the suspect’s attorney, said.
Charles Robinson disagrees with the plea deal.
“You just gave him a plea because you didn’t want to take a chance on losing, how do you not take a chance on losing when you have a family that’s already lost? How dare you?” Charles said.
Brooks was given credit for time served, which means he could get out of prison in three to five and a half years.
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