I’ve slogged through a couple hundred murder case files over the last decade, so many of which would never have occured had the killer been sent to prison a few felonies into his career. I’ve documented a trail of lawlessness left by our justice system, retired District Attorney Peter Gilchrist and the thugs and killers he and it enabled.
But in all that mayhem, this case was the one that most stuck with me. I brought it home from work with me. My husband and I talked about it for years after it occurred in 2005. Had there been no arrests, 10 years from now it still would have haunted me. Maybe it still will anyway.
The brutality level of this crime could have occurred in most mid-sized cities. But the brazeness was a uniquely Charlotte ingredient, one that I’d argue could have only occurred in a few dozen of the country’s most lawless citites at the time. It was bred in a justice system that taught offenders from and early age that there were no real or serious penalties for anything they did. Back then, Charlotte ranked the 57th most dangerous city in the nation out of a pool of the top 370 cities according to Morgan Quitno Press.
The thugs in this case actually attempted to rape a woman in a public parking lot while her boyfriend was inside making a purchase. The whole thing was recorded on video camera. And they didn’t care.
Early the morning of Dec. 10, 2005, Ervin stopped at a convenience store on Glenwood Drive in northwest Charlotte. He left his then-17-year-old girlfriend in the car and went in for cigarettes.
While he was inside, three men approached the car, pulled open the teen’s door and began attacking her, she told the Observer in 2005. The teen, who had asked not to be named, said the men were trying to pull down her underwear when Ervin came out of the store and saw what was happening.
Ervin tried to intervene, but one of the men shot him twice, his girlfriend said. Then the suspects got in the couple’s car and sped off, only to crash the car a short distance away. They jumped from the wrecked car and ran.
“Justin was just trying to get them off of me,” his girlfriend told the Observer six years ago. “He didn’t have to shoot him. They had already pistol-whipped him. He wasn’t trying to fight back.”
Ervin died less than an hour later at Carolinas Medical Center, according to Charlotte-Mecklenburg police.
Here is what Tyrice Lavar Boyd, 32, did before the attempted gang rape and murder. In few justice systems in the country could you rack up 13 separate charges like this and be convicted of them without ever seeing the inside of a prison cell because you get probation every time. But it was the Charlotte, and the Gilchrist way.
2 separate incidents of receiving a stole vehicle = probation.
4 separate incidents of breaking and entering = case consolidation and probation.
2 separate incidence of larceny= probation.
2 separate incidents of larceny after breaking and entering = probation.
2 separate incidents of possession of drugs = probation.
1 incident of possession of firearm by a felon = probation.
Boyd learned well and Justin Dillon Ervin , 20, paid the price with his life.
