Mecklenburg missed ‘flashing red signs’ before girl found dead, NC legislators say
North Carolina legislators on Thursday offered harsh criticism of Mecklenburg County’s social services department while disclosing new details about the death of a Charlotte 6-year-old.
The North Carolina House Oversight Committee questioned County Manager Mike Bryant, Deputy County Manager Kimm Campbell, interim Social Service Director Letecia Loadholt and state social services leaders for hours Thursday at a hearing on Dominique Moody.
The 6-year-old child was found dead at her aunt’s home in east Charlotte in December showing signs of abuse and malnourishment. The aunt and two other people face first-degree murder charges in the case, and news outlets reported police and social services received reports about Moody’s home before she died.
The N.C. Department of Health and Human Service in late May announced a review of social services cases sparked by Moody’s death found “a broad, systemic lack of appropriate safety planning to address identified danger indicators and risk factors to the children.”
On Thursday, committee members shared gruesome details about Moody’s condition when she died and suggested some county employees should face criminal charges over their handling of the case.
“There were flashing red signs that should have tipped people off that something was not right here,” Wake County Republican Rep. Mike Schietzelt said, adding he felt “mounting frustration” during Thursday’s hearing over what he called “a lot of willingness to shirk responsibility and to try to place the blame on someone else or circle wagons.”
Nash County Republican Rep. Allen Chesser, who has been leading the charge in Raleigh to investigate Moody’s death, clashed with county leadership multiple times over what he said were inconsistencies between Thursday’s testimony and what he’d been told in previous conversations.
At one point, Chesser claimed a Mecklenburg County social services employee called for Moody to be removed from the home but was overruled by a supervisor. He backtracked somewhat, saying a supervisor “overturned” a report of ligature marks — a mark on the skin left by some sort of binding — on Moody’s arm to instead attribute the marks to “scratches from a nail protruding from a crib.”
“We have no record of that, and you’ll also recall that Chesser pulled that back too,” Bryant told reporters after the hearing about claims of an internal dispute over whether Moody should remain in the home.
Mecklenburg leaders reiterated previous comments that they’ve cooperated with NCDHHS and conducted internal investigations of social services since Moody died.
In his written testimony to the committee, Bryant revealed 12 county employees have left the county or been disciplined following Moody’s death. A “senior social service manager” was terminated, and a social worker supervisor resigned, according to the testimony. The other ten employees were disciplined.
“These specific actions were associated with the case,” Bryant told the committee Thursday.
Bryant said Moody’s death left him “speechless.”
“While we cannot change the outcome for Dominique, we have an obligation to learn from this case and strengthen the systems entrusted with protecting all vulnerable children,” he said, adding the county’s new budget that takes effect July 1 includes about $2.5 million for Child, Family and Adult Services.
Chesser said as the hearing concluded the “ultimate failure” in the case was “the doing of nothing when the doing of something is required.”
“There should be people held to account, and I believe there are people at that table that should be held to account for the criminal neglect that has been shown in this case and other cases,” Chesser said as Bryant, Campbell and Loadholt sat before him.
Also in Raleigh on Thursday was J. Vernon Peterson, a great-uncle of Moody’s. He told reporters the system has “blood on its hands.”
“Someone somewhere should have sounded the alarm,” Peterson said.
This story was originally published June 4, 2026 at 6:27 PM with the headline "Mecklenburg missed ‘flashing red signs’ before girl found dead, NC legislators say."
