CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden is ringing the alarm after posting a video on Facebook expressing his frustration over Charlotte's latest violent killing involving a teenager.
"I want to talk to the bankers, I want to talk to the lawyers, I want to talk to the surgeons," the sheriff says in the four-minute-long recording.
The clip on the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office social media page had 17 shares and more than 1,200 views as of the writing of this article. The caption reads, "We need to stop this violence."
"We have a 14-year-old, killed in our city -- no protests, no marches, no forums," McFadden told WCNC Charlotte anchor Fred Shropshire. "Let's stop for a minute and let's look at what this is saying because what happens is people outside see it. Charlotte could be a valid city. Do I want my family to move here? Charlotte is a great city, but we have to do some cleaning up about it."
The shooting McFadden is referencing happened Tuesday evening on Baltimore Avenue outside of Southside Homes apartment complex. Officers discovered two teen victims with gunshot wounds. A 14-year-old boy died at the hospital while a 13-year-old boy suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
Sheriff McFadden made a plea to what he called community stakeholders, imploring them to not only take credit for the good happening in the city, but also take responsibility for the bad.
"If the Panthers ever win the Super Bowl, we will all claim the Panthers as our team. That is when it is winning," McFadden said. "If it's a losing thing, 'You're the problem, I have nothing to do with it.' You know, that's my problem, too."
The sheriff acknowledged his message comes during an election season, saying he hoped everyone would take the issue seriously. When pressed about what his ideal fix would look like, he harkened back to the diversity he recalls seeing during the city's response to the Black Lives Matter marches after the death of George Floyd.
"We saw faces in places that we do not normally see in marches when we went to Dilworth, and we went to Myers Park, and we marched through those communities," McFadden said. "It was a turning point, but then it kind of slowly went away. That has to change."
Contact Fred Shropshire at fred@wcnc.com and follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.