Father Charged in Son's Stabbing Death, Arrested at Taco Bell

Just after midnight on Thursday, July 9, 2026, dispatchers in Pineville, North Carolina picked up a 911 call from a mother screaming for help. By the time officers pulled into the parking lot at the Sabal Point Apartments, a 5-year-old boy was already bleeding and unresponsive. His father, 31-year-old Jehaaz-Akil Khaliq Echoles, is now charged with first-degree murder. And in a detail that stopped a lot of people cold, police say Echoles left the apartment and drove to a Taco Bell, where he was arrested about a mile and a half away. Here is what investigators have laid out so far.

What Police Say Happened Inside the Apartment

According to an arrest affidavit, Echoles kicked down the front door of the apartment on Sabal Park Drive, walked straight into his son's bedroom, and shut the door behind him. He did not live there. Court records list his address in Charlotte, roughly 20 minutes away. The boy's mother, who is also Echoles' ex-girlfriend, told officers she heard a commotion coming from the room. When she opened the door, Echoles ran past her and out of the apartment. She found her son covered in stab wounds to his head, neck, and arms. Police responded to the complex around 12:10 a.m. after her call reported an assault with a deadly weapon. A second child who was in the home was not hurt.

Officers Arrived in Under a Minute

Pineville Police Chief Corey Copley said his officers got there fast, less than a minute after the call came in. They walked into a nightmare. "Officers got here within less than a minute and was met with a 5-year-old child that sustained some traumatic injuries," Copley said. Instead of waiting for an ambulance, the officers picked the boy up, put him in the back of a patrol car, and drove him straight to Atrium Health Pineville themselves. He was pronounced dead at the hospital. Copley described the weapon only as a "blunt force trauma-type cutting tool." He also spoke honestly about how hard the scene was on his officers, saying they had to set their emotions aside and get to work the second they arrived.

The Taco Bell Arrest

This is the part that has kept people talking. After leaving the apartment, Echoles went to the Taco Bell at 10917 Carolina Place Parkway, right in front of Carolina Place Mall. It sits about a mile and a half from the crime scene. Officers with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department tracked him there and took him into custody. Local outlets and readers across the country described the contrast as jarring: a father accused of killing his own child, then pulling up to a fast food drive-thru minutes later. Police were clear about one thing. This was not a random act. They called it a domestic incident, and the motive has not been released. Echoles declined to speak with detectives after his arrest and asked for an attorney.

A Long List of Prior Charges

Echoles was not a stranger to the Mecklenburg County jail. He has seven different mugshots on the jail website going back to 2023. His record includes a 2020 conviction in North Carolina for assault on a woman, for which he was placed on probation and served no prison time. In May 2023, he was charged in Gaston County after police said he punched a man in the chin. The 2026 charges stack up quickly. In January, an affidavit said he broke a woman's car windows with a baseball bat while she was still sitting inside. In March, he allegedly took a different woman's car and threw her keys at her face when she asked for them back, scratching her. This pattern stretched right up to summer.

The Most Recent Case Was Weeks Before

On June 15, less than a month before the killing, Echoles was arrested again. Court documents said he beat a woman multiple times with a leather belt, leaving welts across her body and scratches on her arm. An affidavit noted the two were in a domestic relationship. That means Echoles had at least three separate assault cases moving through the courts in 2026 alone, all involving women, before the July 9 arrest. One of the January affidavits stated it plainly: "Defendant is a danger to the victim and has already assaulted her." These cases were still open when the boy was killed. Echoles is being held without bond, and prosecutors pointed to that history during his first appearance.

He Never Looked Up in Court

During his first court appearance on Thursday, Echoles hung his head the entire time. He never looked up and never said a word, according to reporters in the room. A judge called him a danger to the community and denied him bond, citing both his criminal history and the charge in front of them. He was appointed a public defender. He is charged with first-degree murder and was booked into the Mecklenburg County jail. His next court date is set for July 30. The Pineville Police Department led the investigation, with Charlotte-Mecklenburg officers helping locate and arrest him at the Taco Bell. The chief also mentioned that police had been called earlier this year for some kind of incident involving the same family.

The Neighborhood Is Reeling

The people who live at Sabal Point Apartments knew this family. Several neighbors told local reporters the boys were a regular sight, playing football in the parking lot on ordinary days. "I see them all the time. They're out here. They're playing football in the parking lot," one neighbor said. "It's just unsettling and heartbreaking." Another described the scene that night in painful detail. "The little boy was just yelling for his brother. The mother was yelling for her son. It was horrific to see." One resident recalled the mother standing outside, crying, with a baby in her arms and screaming for help before anyone understood what had happened. The mother has been cooperating fully with investigators.

Advocates Point to the Warning Signs

Domestic violence advocates in the Charlotte area said cases like this one are especially difficult in court because the accused had such a tangled history of prior allegations. When someone has multiple open cases spread across different victims, hearings can drag and pile up. One advocate framed the loss in stark terms. "It is devastating to lose a child," the advocate said. "Knowing that somebody has the power to take away the thing that you love most is kind of that ultimate form of power and control." The comment lands hard given what the records show: a string of assault charges over several years, and a 5-year-old caught in the middle of it. The community was left searching for answers that may never fully come.

What Comes Next

For now, the facts are grim and mostly settled. A father broke into an apartment he had no reason to be in, went into his son's room, and left the boy dead. He drove to a fast food restaurant, where officers found him and put him in handcuffs. He is sitting in jail with no bond and no statement to police beyond a request for a lawyer. The mother lost her son and is helping the case move forward. The other child in the home survived. When Echoles returns to court on July 30, prosecutors will begin the long process of turning that affidavit into a trial. Until then, a Pineville neighborhood is left staring at a parking lot where two little boys used to play, trying to make sense of a night that took less than a minute for police to reach and a lifetime for a family to carry.