His mother was waiting on police to take him away for treatment. She’d just finished filing paperwork with a judge that would allow officers to get him help — even if he didn’t want it.
It was a somewhat routine process. Sanrico Sanchez McGill had bipolar schizophrenia. He’d been diagnosed for nearly 10 years and involuntarily committed at least three times before, his brothers later told police.
This time, McGill had a gun. He shot it outside their apartment, his mother told police. His brothers said he’d shot two bullets into the air in response to two other shots nearby.
After officers showed up, McGill pointed it at one of his brothers. The other told police not to shoot.
Four Charlotte police officers responding to McGill’s mother’s calls shot at the 34-year-old 25 times on Dec. 16, 2023. One of them had taken him in under an involuntarily commitment order not six months earlier.
This time, two bullets struck him.
He probably would have survived the shot to his hip. It was the shot to his chest that killed him, Mecklenburg District Attorney Spencer Merriweather wrote in a Tuesday letter reviewing the shooting.
McGill died inside the home in north Charlotte’s Lincoln Heights. The gun, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers later found, wasn’t loaded, and an empty magazine was on the sidewalk in front of the steps where McGill died.
“As you know,” Merriweather wrote to Brandon Blackman, the special agent in charge at the State Bureau of Investigation’s Harrisburg office, “this letter specifically does not address issues relating to tactics, or whether officers followed correct police procedures or CMPD Directives.”
CMPD has the power to review and change their policies, Merriweather said, but he does not.
Merriweather wrote that the officers were “entirely reasonable” in believing McGill posed an “imminent threat of great bodily harm or death to his brother.” When police are able to prove they sensed “an imminent threat,” they are also able to argue they acted in self-defense, history shows.
Officers were justified in shooting McGill, Merriweather wrote. Any charges brought against them wouldn’t hold up in court, he determined.
Merriweather continued: “If no criminal charges are filed, that does not mean the District Attorney’s Office believes the matter was in all respects handled appropriately from an administrative or tactical viewpoint. It is simply a determination that there is not a reasonable likelihood of proving criminal charges beyond a reasonable doubt unanimously to a jury.”
Merriweather has never brought a police shooting in front of a grand jury for review since being elected in 2017. The Mecklenburg District Attorney’s Office last did that in 2013 for the police shooting that killed Jonathan Ferrell. That case was later dismissed with a hung jury, and then-Attorney General Roy Cooper opted not to prosecute a case .
A mother’s calls
McGill’s mother called officers at 6:15 a.m. on Dec. 16, 2023, after she heard five shots in the parking lot outside a duplex at 1515 Catherine Simmons Ave. — “a densely populated area of Charlotte,” according to Merriweather. She thought McGill had fired them.
When officers arrived, McGill was inside. His mother told them he was “not mentally well” before they asked him, through a loudspeaker, to put his hands up.
He didn’t.
Instead, he came out “in an extremely agitated state,” yelled at his brother, went inside and came back out with a gun, racking the slide — a maneuver that loads a gun’s chamber — and pointing it at his brother, Merriweather wrote, referencing body-worn camera footage.
Officers Benjamin DeVries, Sean Werchek, Tymel Carson, and James Fisher didn’t know the firearm wasn’t loaded, Merriweather said. They only knew McGill was posing an imminent threat to his brother. That was enough to justify their shootings.
CMPD makes contact
SBI investigators interviewed Officer Werchek nearly two weeks after the shooting, on Dec. 29, 2023.
He remembered neighbors coming outside after hearing noise: officers and family members talking to McGill. When McGill first walked onto the front porch steps, his hands were empty but clenched, Werchek said, according to Merriweather’s letter. He remembered McGill “taking an aggressive stance” and “not acknowledging the officer’s commands at all.”
McGill was yelling, he said, but Werchek couldn’t understand what he was saying. He “did not speak with or engage with officers at any point,” Werchek said. He remembered Officer DeVries firing at McGill “at some point, while giving commands.” Werchek fired his gun when McGill appeared with a semi-automatic gun and raised it toward his brother and some officers.
Werchek thought he fired five times. He fired 11 bullets toward McGill.
“Officer Werchek explained that he fired more than one shot because he fired until the decedent no longer posed a threat,” Merriweather wrote. “He determined the decedent was no longer a threat when the decedent fell to the ground.”
Werchek had seen McGill before, he told investigators. Less than a year earlier, he’d taken McGill into custody for an involuntary commitment order without incident.
Investigators spoke to Officer Carson five days after the shooting, on Dec. 21, 2023. He’d been at CMPD for three months, and Werchek was his training officer. McGill was “acting in an irate manner” for about 30 minutes, Carson said. It wasn’t until officers shined a spotlight onto McGill that he went inside to get a handgun, Carson said. When he pointed it, it looked like he was aiming for officers and bystanders, Carson said.
Carson told McGill to “drop the gun” and fired his weapon. McGill fell to the ground, he remembered, then got up and went inside.
Carson remembered shooting at McGill five times. He shot 11 times.
Six days after the shooting, on Dec. 22, 2023, investigators interviewed Fisher, who provided cover to other officers during the incident by keeping his rifle pointed at McGill. Fisher recounted watching McGill leave the step, go inside and come back out. At this time, Fisher tried to tell Carson to turn off the blue lights on the police car. They were annoying McGill, he told SBI agents.
As he did that, he heard gunfire ring out. He thought they “were in the middle of a gunfight,” where McGill was firing at officers, he said. Fisher saw McGill in an “’interesting’ posture, like he was leaning or running,” he said.
He fired his rifle once.
SBI agents also interviewed DeVries on Dec. 22, 2023.
He didn’t remember what McGill had said, but he knew he ignored commands. He didn’t remember what commands officers gave but “suggested they would have been something to effect of ‘show your hands’ or ‘stop.’”
DeVries told investigators he “heard the slide rack,” which indicated a round is chambered, and saw McGill with the gun in his hand. “At that point, he made the decision to fire his rifle,” Merriweather wrote in the review. He felt he “was compelled to shoot, relying on his experience with firearms” and on his observations of McGill.
He fired two shots at McGill.
Brother told officers not to shoot
SBI officers interviewed McGill’s brothers, identified as “D.M.” and “C.M.” in Merriweather’s letter, the day of the shooting, on Dec. 16, 2023.
They told officers their brother had been diagnosed with bipolar schizophrenia for nearly 10 years. He’d been involuntarily committed three or four times and was supposed to be taken in again following a magistrate’s Dec. 15 order.
Officers can take up to 24 hours to serve involuntary commitment orders after they are issued.
The night before the shooting was “restless for everyone,” C.M. told investigators. McGill had episodes once or twice a year. This one consisted of McGill talking to himself, opening and shutting doors and yelling repeatedly.
Merriweather says remedies can’t come from him
“The fact that a shooting may be controversial does not mean that criminal prosecution is warranted,” Merriweather wrote in his review. “Even if the District Attorney believes a shooting was avoidable or an officer did not follow expected procedures or norms, this does not necessarily amount to a violation of criminal law. In these circumstances, remedies (if any are appropriate) may be pursued by administrative or civil means.”
Those remedies are primarily made through “city and county governments, police departments, and private civil attorneys.”
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