A judge denied a plea deal in a Belmont man's death
Superior Court Judge George C. Bell said that he wasn't comfortable accepting 27-year-old D'Shaun Robinson's guilty plea connected to the death of 31-year-old Andy Tench.
Tench went out in the early morning hours of March 25, 2024, to celebrate his birthday at The Bar at 316, an LGBTQ-friendly bar, according to his family.
He never came home.
Instead, he was seen in surveillance footage leaving the bar with Robinson, Assistant District Attorney Kyle Huggins said in Mecklenburg County Superior Court on Tuesday.
Robinson later told police that while he was with Tench, Tench died, and he put Tench's body in a dumpster, then went shopping using Tench's financial cards, driving Tench's car around the Charlotte area.
Tench's car broke down in Union County, and Robinson abandoned it there, Huggins said.
Tench's body was never recovered, and prosecutors do not have the evidence to prove that Robinson is responsible for Tench's death, Huggins added.
Tench's family has asked the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department to search an Anson County landfill for Tench's body, as they believe that if Robinson's story is true, Tench's body would be there. The police department so far has refused to do so. A petition asking that the landfill be searched has over 6,000 signatures. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department said in search warrant documents that they believe Tench was murdered, but in a statement, they said they haven't been able to corroborate claims that Tench's body is actually in the landfill.
Robinson pleaded guilty to charges of identity theft and concealment of death in Tench's death, as well as second-degree burglary in an unrelated case. Had Bell accepted his plea, Robinson would have been sentenced to 17-30 months in prison and two years of supervised probation. He has already spent 362 days in the Mecklenburg County Detention Center awaiting the resolution of his case.
But ultimately, after presiding over the bulk of the plea hearing, Bell was swayed by arguments from Tench's family, who urged him not to accept the plea deal.
Dressed in a black t-shirt emblazoned with the words, "Justice for Andy," along with a picture of Tench's face, Tench's sister, Natasha Newman, addressed Robinson directly.
"What you have done is not OK, and a little bit of jail time will not hold you accountable. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that you are very much capable of doing this to someone else," Newman said. "You should be held accountable."
Newman told Bell that Robinson should receive a longer prison sentence than the one offered in the plea deal.
"He deserves more time," she told Bell. "This little amount of time, it's not fair to my family. It's not fair to Andy."
After hearing from Newman and a family friend, reading letters other members of Tench's family wrote and reviewing the petition, Bell said he was not comfortable proceeding with the plea, and Huggins withdrew the plea offer.
Newman said afterward that she was grateful to Bell for listening to the family.
"We cannot call that plea deal justice for Andy, so today we're grateful that the judge has rejected the plea, along with the state withdrawing the plea. We are hoping that this is another step forward in the right direction of getting justice for Andy," Newman said.
Tracie Blanton, Tench's mother, said in an interview that she wants Robinson's case to go to trial, which has the potential for a much steeper sentence.
"I'm ecstatic right now. Andy's going to get justice. We won't stop until he does," Blanton said.
Bell was the second judge in recent months to reject the plea deal.
In March, Superior Court Judge Craig Collins also would not proceed after hearing from Tench's family.
'I'm just not going to do this,' Collins said after reading Newman's victim-impact statement, according to The Charlotte Observer.
This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Family says they will continue to seek justice for Andy Tench
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