A 43-year-old Charlotte man is behind bars, charged with first-degree murder in a killing that happened when he was just 18 years old. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police say Alan Marquis Phifer was arrested yesterday in connection with a shooting that left one man dead and four other people wounded or assaulted back in March 2001, a case that had sat unsolved for a quarter century until new DNA results pointed investigators to him.
According to the City of Charlotte, CMPD’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Team took Phifer into custody and charged him with first-degree murder and robbery with a dangerous weapon. The shooting happened on Saturday, March 24, 2001, in the 3700 block of North Sharon-Amity Road near Central Avenue in east Charlotte, where 21-year-old Cesar Gudino Gonzalez was fatally shot. Two other people suffered gunshot wounds in the same incident, and two more victims were physically assaulted, according to the city’s release.
As reported by WCNC Charlotte, Phifer was booked into the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office detention center, where he is being held without bond. Defendants facing first-degree murder charges in North Carolina are typically held without bond pending their initial court appearances.
How a 25-Year-Old Case Finally Broke
The city’s release lays out a specific investigative timeline: CMPD’s Cold Case Unit reopened the Gonzalez homicide on January 29, 2026, received a key forensic lab report linking Phifer to the case on February 9, 2026, and obtained formal arrest warrants on August 26, 2026. That breakthrough came from a multi-agency effort involving the Cold Case Unit, the CMPD Crime Lab, private laboratory DNA Labs International, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Team, and grant funding from the federal Sexual Assault Kit Initiative…