A 29-year-old man with a prior manslaughter conviction and a string of felony arrests allegedly killed one man and seriously wounded another barely two hours after walking out of a North Carolina jail on bond, and local leaders want to know why he was free at all.
David Simpson posted a $10,000 bond on a charge of possession of a weapon by a prisoner and left Mecklenburg County Jail at 12:20 a.m. on July 29. By approximately 1:45 a.m., less than two hours later, Charlotte police say he had shot two men at an east Charlotte apartment complex, Fox News reported. One victim died at the scene. The second collapsed inside an apartment and underwent surgery.
Simpson now faces charges of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, and possession of a firearm by a felon. A Mecklenburg County judge ordered him held without bond on Friday. His next court date is August 21.
Court documents paint a precise picture of the minutes before the shooting. Surveillance video cited in those records shows Simpson standing outside with his girlfriend, Shakema Scott, when the victims' SUV drove past the apartment complex. Simpson went inside. He came back out carrying what detectives described as a weighted black bag, then ran toward the victims.
About 10 minutes later, two gunshots can be heard on the video.
Roughly 30 seconds after that, Simpson appears on camera jogging back toward his apartment, handling the bag as he moves. He then drove away from the complex. Officers recovered two spent 7.62-caliber rifle casings at the scene, the kind of round fired by military-pattern rifles, not handguns.
Police said the shooting followed a long-running dispute over a parking space outside the complex. Officers had already been called to the property twice that night over arguments about parking before the gunfire started.
Scott has been charged with accessory after the fact.
Simpson's criminal history makes the $10,000 bond that set him loose look like a systemic failure. In 2013, when he was a teenager, Simpson was charged with first-degree murder in a fatal shooting. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 2015 and served roughly five years in prison before his release on parole in 2020.
Freedom did not slow him down. Since 2020, Simpson has been arrested several more times, including on multiple charges of possession of a firearm by a felon, a federal offense that carries up to 15 years. At the time of the July 29 shooting, he already had pending charges for possession of a firearm by a felon, resisting a public officer, and misdemeanor larceny. The charge he bonded out on, possession of a weapon by a prisoner, meant he had allegedly been caught with a weapon while already in custody.
Charlotte defense attorney Tim Cannady, who is not involved in the case, put the question bluntly. He told WCNC:
"If you look at his history, it seems like this gentleman has picked up just about every year up to this point some kind of a violent crime. So you kind of have to ask the question: Why wasn't he already in jail?"
Cannady is not the only Charlotte figure asking that question. Former City Council member Tariq Bokhari offered a sharper assessment to WBTV:
"We know what these top 1% of repeat offenders are going to do, and for some reason, we just don't have the appetite to take action. It feels like 'Groundhog Day,' to be quite honest."
Bokhari's frustration points to a pattern familiar to anyone who follows violent crime in American cities. A small number of repeat offenders cycle through the system, arrested, bonded out, arrested again, while prosecutors and judges fail to keep them locked up. Each pass through the revolving door gives them another chance to escalate.
Simpson's case is an extreme version of that cycle. A man convicted of killing someone in 2013 spent five years in prison, came out on parole, picked up multiple felony weapons charges, and still managed to post bond on yet another weapons offense. Within two hours of his release, police say, he retrieved what appears to have been a rifle, ran toward two men over a parking dispute, and opened fire.
One of those men is dead. Another fought for his life in surgery.
Simpson's conduct after his arrest matched the defiance of his record. When his first court appearance was scheduled for Friday morning, he refused to leave his jail cell. The hearing had to be delayed until that afternoon, when a judge ordered him to appear. Only then did he show up, and the judge held him without bond.
That order came too late for the man who died at the apartment complex. It came too late for the man who went into surgery. And it came too late for a system that had every reason to keep Simpson behind bars long before July 29.
The questions Cannady and Bokhari raised remain unanswered. Who set the $10,000 bond on a weapons charge for a convicted killer with active felony cases? Why did multiple prior arrests for illegal firearm possession not result in Simpson's detention? What happened to the pending charges that were already on the books when he walked out of Mecklenburg County Jail?
A man is dead because a system that knew exactly who David Simpson was chose to let him go anyway. When the same people who set bond amounts and approve plea deals ask why violent crime persists, the answer is in the mirror.
