By Triangle staff
All four of the vehicles stolen from Wingate’s South Village parking lot on Halloween night have been recovered by local law enforcement and one of the two suspects has been arrested.
Chief Campus Safety Officer Michael Easley said in an e-mail to students on Nov. 29 that “a suspect was in arrested in Charlotte and was driving one of the stolen vehicles when he was pulled over. The suspect was brought back to Union County and placed in the Union County Jail on a $75,000 secured bond.”
Easley did not reveal the name of the suspect, but a Triangle search of Mecklenburg and Union county arrest records revealed that it was 19-year-old Jamarrion Lilmanning Cunningham of 7124 Wallace Road in Charlotte. Cunningham was arrested on Nov. 28 at 6:24 p.m. at the 11200 block of East Independence Boulevard in Matthews by Wingate Police Department officer Josh Bolick. He has been charged with one count of possessing a stolen vehicle and four counts of conspiracy, according to police reports. All five are felony charges.
Easley said that another stolen vehicle, the last one yet to be accounted for, was recovered on Nov. 29 in Gastonia.
Police reports show that Cunningham has a long list of run-ins with the law dating back to March 2021, when he was arrested by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police and charged with two counts of robbery with a dangerous weapon at age 16. He has since been arrested twice more since March 2022 for similar armed-robbery charges. Cunningham has been in and out of jail since August 2021, serving almost 18 months behind bars, with his last incarceration being a 15-month stint in the Mecklenburg County Jail that ended Aug. 1.
With the other suspect yet to be arrested, Easley said the investigation is still ongoing and that if anyone has information regarding the car thefts to call Campus Safety at 704-233-8999.
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