Jose Octavio Cruz, a 57-year-old Hispanic man known to friends and family as “Tavito,” was a carpenter, a Christian preacher, and a prayer group leader in his Charlotte, North Carolina, community. His life was violently cut short during a home invasion in the summer of 2024.
On the night of August 2, 2024, around 11:30 p.m., several armed men broke into a residence in the 3500 block of Shamrock Drive in east Charlotte.
The suspects were attempting to rob the occupants of over a thousand dollars in cash. During the robbery, they opened fire, shooting four people. When Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers arrived, they found two victims lying in the road with life-threatening gunshot wounds. Inside the home, they discovered two more victims. Three of the individuals were rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment. The fourth, Jose Octavio Cruz, was pronounced dead at the scene.
The investigation moved quickly, and within a week, police had three suspects in custody. On August 6, officers arrested 19-year-old Kevin Zetino. The next day, they apprehended 24-year-old Adilio Cesar Garcia Lemus. The third suspect, 20-year-old Jonathan Rivera, was taken into custody on August 8. All three men were charged with a range of serious felonies, including murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, conspiracy, and first-degree burglary.
In the years that followed, two of the men pleaded guilty for their roles in the deadly shooting. Adilio Cesar Garcia Lemus pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, felony conspiracy, first-degree burglary, and robbery with a dangerous weapon. He was sentenced to serve between 300 and 372 months, or 25 to 31 years, in state prison.
Later, Kevin Zetino also pleaded guilty to murder in the killing of Jose Cruz. The third suspect, Jonathan Rivera, remains incarcerated while awaiting trial. As of October 2026, with two defendants having admitted their guilt, the case against the final suspect was still pending.
