Out on bond despite 37 felony charges since 2023: Did NC court system fail?
Local courts failed the public when a man charged with repeatedly stealing cars and more crimes allegedly crashed a stolen KIA into an SUV transporting a passenger to a kidney treatment, law enforcement officials say.
Durham County Sheriff Clarence Birkhead said Shyrone Evans shouldn’t have been returning to the jail again and again on escalating charges, the latest being the murder of a Durham man on his way to receiving dialysis.
“The tragic accident Mr. Evans is charged with that allegedly caused the death of another person could have been avoided,” Birkhead said.
On March 19, Evans sped away from police in a stolen car and slammed into a Toyota Highlander, police say. The collision killed passenger Jermaine Clement, 53, a former GoDurham ACCESS driver, according to interviews.
Durham police charged Evans, 20, with second-degree murder and three other felonies. He had already collected at least 37 felony and 9 misdemeanor charges since July 2023 in Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Durham.
But after being arrested March 15, Evans walked out of the Durham County jail March 18, the day before Jermaine Clement died. He did so after covering a $10,000 bond for violating pretrial release conditions in Orange County.
Larry Smith, spokesperson for the Durham Fraternal Order of Police, questioned why local courts set low bonds when there was a clear pattern of criminal behavior.
“Law enforcement officers have clearly done what they were supposed to do in arresting this person over and over. And it just appears that there’s a breakdown somewhere on the judicial court side of it, that’s just continuing to allow them to get out and now somebody’s dead,” Smith said.
Durham County Chief District Court Judge Clayton Jones questioned why it had taken the court system so long to close Evans’ cases that date back to July 2023.
“These cases pending this long compromise the community and, unfortunately, put us in this position where we have a loss of life,” Jones said.
According to Durham Superior Court rules set by the senior resident judge, the system calls for low-level felonies to be addressed within one year in.
There are many reasons why prosecuting criminal cases may be delayed, from defendants changing attorneys or not showing up in court to prosecutors waiting for evidence to be processed, said Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry. Individuals who face multiple charges from different jurisdictions can also complicate and slow down the process, she said.
The number of charges against an individual can be misleading, Deberry said, as officers often stack them by seeking different crimes for the same action.
People charged with low-level felonies don’t typically end up serving time in prison, said the district attorney and others. All of Evans’ felonies before the fatal crash fit that category.
Deberry also pointed out that Evans was released after he made his bond, set by a judge. Both the state the U.S. constitution forbid holding people who haven’t been convicted if they can make their bond, she said.
Evans criminal charge history, from 2023
Court records tracking Evans’ arrests provide little information on his background or motivation for the crimes police say he committed. Evans’ attorney Cassandra Marcella Tilley didn’t respond to a telephone message left by a reporter.
But he’s been charged many times.
Since 2023, Evans was caught at least five times in the Triangle with stolen vehicles and once with a stolen gun, court records say. In the three months before the crash, police charged Evans with 18 low-level felonies, including for breaking into cars, running from police and strangling a woman.
From 2023 to March of this year, Evans broke into and stole cars in Durham, Chapel Hill, and Carrboro, court documents allege.
In early 2025, police had linked Evans to a significant increase in vehicle break-ins around Page Road, Mt. Moriah Road and downtown, a Durham County search warrant states.
Evans’ first criminal charge in court records appears on July 6, 2023, when the Durham County Sheriff’s Office contended he possessed stolen goods and arrested him on Sept. 8, 2023, according to court documents.
After that arrest, Evans posted a $2,500 secured bond and was released that day, according to information provided by the Sheriff’s Office. He was arrested on eight more felonies, including breaking and entering two homes, Oct. 7, 2023.
Evans was released on a secured $10,000 bond on Oct. 10, 2023, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
In 2024, Evans picked up 17 more felonies and four misdemeanors in three cases in Durham County and one in Carrboro. He wasn’t arrested on the charges until Dec. 11, when police said they caught him in possession of a stolen Hyundai Sonata and a stolen tan Glock firearm.
Evans was released on a $30,000 bond set by a Durham judge on Dec. 19, according to the Durham County Sheriff’s Office.
Since January, police had charged Evans with at least 11 more felonies in Durham and Chapel Hill total before the March 19 crash.
On Feb. 4 Durham police arrested Evans and charged him with harming a woman he was dating. Evans strangled and punched the woman, who he tried to stop from calling 911 by taking her phone away, Evans’ arrest warrant states.
On Feb. 12, he was released on a $15,000 bond set by Durham District Court Judge Kendra Montgomery-Blinn, according to court documents. The woman was in court, said she wasn’t afraid and wanted to drop the charges, the judge noted in the documents.
Pretrial Integrity Act
North Carolina legislators took steps in 2023 to address the risk of repeat offenders getting released. The Pretrial Integrity Act requires a judge, not a magistrate, to set bond conditions for people arrested on new charges while on pretrial release.
If a defendant is arrested for a new crime while on pretrial release for a pending case, the judge determining the conditions of release should ask a law enforcement or court officials to “provide a criminal history report and risk assessment, if available, for the defendant and shall consider the criminal history when setting conditions of pretrial release,” the law states.
But that act didn’t apply to that final $10,000 bond that Orange County District Court Judge Hathaway Pendergrass signed off on March 15, since it wasn’t a new criminal charge but a pretrial release violation.
On March 17, Chapel Hill police did issue three arrest warrants charging Evans with more felonies in three cases. But Evans wasn’t arrested on the new charges before he paid the bond and left the Durham jail on March 18.
Fatal crash
On March 19, around 5:30 a.m. Durham officers received a report of two men breaking into vehicles at a Comfort Inn on Mt. Moriah Road and taking a white Kia Soul, according to a March 19 search warrant seeking access to Evan’s iPhone. While driving to the motel, officers spotted a stolen Kia Soul speeding away from the inn, the warrant states.
The Kia turned onto Durham Chapel Hill Boulevard, ran the bright red light over the intersection of Southwest Durham Drive and crashed into the Toyota Highlander, which was owned by a transportation service that was driving Clement to his dialysis, according to interviews and media reports.
After the wreck officers rendered aid to two people in the Kia. Evans ran from the stolen Kia to the University Kia Dealership, where he barricaded himself in another car, the search warrant states. Police soon arrested him..
Officers found four bank cards on another person in the KIA. The bank cards belonged to Raleigh man who reported his wallet stolen from his car the morning of March 19 in Raleigh. It was one of several vehicle break-ins in Brier Creek that morning, according to the warrant.
Evans is being held without bond at the Durham County jail. On the day of his first court appearance, Assistant District Attorney Mackenzie Myers read a letter from Clement’s family.
“Jermaine did not deserve to leave this life in such a manner, and we are struggling to come to terms with the tragic loss of someone so dear to us,” ABC11 recorded Myers saying on March 26.
Virginia Bridges covers criminal justice in the Triangle and across North Carolina for The News & Observer. Her work is produced with financial support from the nonprofit The Just Trust. The N&O maintains full editorial control of its journalism.
This story was originally published April 1, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
