Roy Cooper Faces Soft-on-Crime Attacks Over Teacher Killing by Suspect With 20 Prior Arrests
Updated
Updated · Fox News · May 14
Roy Cooper Faces Soft-on-Crime Attacks Over Teacher Killing by Suspect With 20 Prior Arrests
1 articles · Updated · Fox News · May 14
January’s killing of Raleigh teacher Zoe Welch has revived scrutiny of Roy Cooper after prosecutors said suspect Ryan Camacho had 20 prior arrests before a Cooper-appointed judge cut his 2025 breaking-and-entering charges to a misdemeanor.
Dorothy Hairston Mitchell, appointed by Cooper in 2021 and later elected, reduced Camacho’s charges despite four pending counts, letting him go free before Welch was found dead from blunt-force trauma.
Cooper’s Senate campaign has tried to separate him from the judge’s later elected tenure and counterattacked Republican rival Michael Whatley over his past appointments of convicted child sex offender Harvey Lee West to a state GOP committee.
The case lands in a high-stakes North Carolina Senate race and adds to broader criticism of Cooper’s justice record, including a 2021 Covid-era release of 3,500 inmates, 560 of whom were rearrested within two years.
How does the murder of a teacher by a repeat offender challenge the system of judicial appointments and releases?
As a state investigates its pandemic-era inmate releases, what are the key lessons for balancing public health and safety?
When 3,500 inmates were released for health reasons, what safeguards failed to prevent subsequent violent crimes?