CHARLOTTE, N.C. ( QUEEN CITY NEWS ) — A 23-year-old man has been convicted of murder over accessing alcohol underage, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg District Attorney’s Office .
On January 29, 2024, a jury found Juan Deras Escalante guilty of first-degree murder and 4 counts of discharging a firearm into occupied property connected to the death of 41-year-old Domingo Venencio-Tapia, who was a new father.
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Escalante was sentenced to life without parole in prison for the first-degree murder charge and given between 8 years, 4 months, and 14 years for the other charges.
Officials say that on April 29, 2019, then-18-year-old Escalante and his co-defendant, then-17-year-old Gerardo Lagunes, were at a restaurant on South Boulevard and asked Domingo Venencio-Tapia to buy alcohol for them, to which Venencio-Tapia refused.
