North Carolina Man Breaks Into Pineville Home, Stabs 5-Year-Old Son to Death

Upon arriving at the scene, officers discovered a 5-year-old boy unresponsive with multiple stab wounds.

Published: 7/10/2026, 11:30:25 PM EDT

North Carolina Man Breaks Into Pineville Home, Stabs 5-Year-Old Son to Death — Vancouver police investigate a crime scene after a man drove into pedestrians at the annual Lapu Lapu festival celebrating Filipino culture, at East 43rd Avenue and Fraser, in the south of Vancouver on April 26, 2025. Canadian police arrested a man on April 26 after a car plowed into a street party in the western city of Vancouver killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8:00 pm (0300 GMT Sunday) in Vancouver's Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. (Don MacKinnon/AFP via Getty Images)

A North Carolina man was arrested for allegedly stabbing his 5-year-old son to death.

Jehaaz-Akil Khaliq Echoles, 31, was arrested after allegedly breaking into his baby mother's home and entering her children's room after midnight on Thursday. Police attempted to render first aid to the child before driving the child to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Echoles has six prior arrests, including four arrests for assault on a female.

According to a press release from the Pineville Police Department, officers received a call of an assault with a deadly weapon from an apartment complex in the town shortly after midnight on Thursday. Upon arriving at the scene, officers discovered a 5-year-old boy unresponsive with multiple stab wounds. Officers attempted to give the child first aid, but the child was pronounced dead after being taken to a local hospital.

A partial audio clip of the 911 call made by the child's mother and published by local news outlet Queen City News added more details. The child's mother told the 911 dispatcher that Echoles had kicked her door down and entered the children's room. The dispatcher asked if she was alone in the home, to which she responded that she was, except for her two children. The dispatcher then asked if Echoles was carrying any weapons, which she did not know; the dispatcher asked if she owned any weapons, which the mother did not know either. Echoles can be heard in the background of the call.

Echoles then went into the children's room and closed the door. The children were asleep in their beds. The mother said that Echoles was shaking their beds, and she was scared they would be in danger.

Officers later arrested Echoles at a nearby Taco Bell restaurant and booked him into the Mecklenburg County Jail. He was identified by police as the father of the deceased child. Police said they were treating the incident as a domestic matter and not a random act.

Echoles is charged with first-degree murder, assault on a female, and simple assault. He has six other prior arrests on eight different charges. He was previously convicted of assault on a female and served two months in jail in 2025. He has four other charges of the same crime from 2023, 2024, and March of this year.

During the July 4 weekend, a police officer in the city of Rittman, Ohio was shot and killed while responding to a break-in.

According to a joint news release from the Rittman Police Department and the Wayne and Medina County Sheriff's Department, Rittman police were dispatched to a home in the city at around 9:54 p.m. on July 5 after receiving a 911 call about a break-in. Local police were assisted by multiple law enforcement agencies from Wayne, Medina, and Summit Counties.

The suspect immediately opened fire on the officers upon their arrival at the scene. Body cam footage included with the news release showed police taking cover behind a Sheriff's Department vehicle while attempting to deploy a drone while gunshots ring out in the background.

The suspect, 39-year-old Brandon Fazekas, and two victims—44-year-old Christine McWilliams and her daughter, 13-year-old McKinley McWilliams—were all pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities told local news outlet WKYC that Fazekas and McWilliams were exes.

Also killed in the shootout was Rittman Police Sgt. Scott Ries. Ries served the Rittman Police Department for 10 years; before that, he served as a deputy with the Wayne County Sheriff's Office and as an officer with the Police Department in Sugar Grove, Fairfield County.

Four other officers, members of the Medina/Wayne County SWAT Team, were hit by gunfire during the shootout. Two of them were treated at the scene, while two others were treated at local hospitals and released shortly afterward.