NC police say law bars widow from information on officers who killed her husband
Five days after an undercover officer in a T-shirt shot and killed her husband, Rebecca Insley picked up a Gastonia Police Department form and wrote down what she wanted: “a full and transparent investigation, and full accountability.”
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She underlined the word transparent. Where the citizen complaint form asked for the officer names, she squiggled a question mark.
Police Chief Trent Conard wrote Insley back five months later. There was a “thorough investigation,” he assured her, but North Carolina law left him “unable to disclose the details.” Disciplinary actions, he said, were confidential — a part of officers’ private personnel files.
The Charlotte Observer previously reported that Conard’s department made false statements about what happened before ABC officers killed Derrick Manigault. Now, he and other city leaders are opting not to use a mechanism within state law that would allow them to tell Insley what their investigation found.
In some N.C. cities, like Charlotte, leaders decades ago amended law to more easily share information about city investigations with the person affected by an employee’s actions.
“I don’t see why that wouldn’t be something that could be adopted by each county,” Insley told the Observer in a recent interview. “It’s an excruciating process being family member of the victim and going through this process. Maybe it’s not like this in every county, but in Gaston County I have just been left in the dark.”
Derrick Manigault died near Jakob’s Food Mart in west Gastonia on Jan. 10, 2026. He argued with a man in the parking lot for about 30 seconds, surveillance video shows. When Manigault went inside, the man followed 30 seconds behind. The two argued again.
After 20 seconds of back and forth, Manigault told the man to “leave me the f— alone” and three times asked him if he was “trying to lose your life tonight?”
As Manigault stood by the front door, he pulled out a fake gun and held it by his side for about 10 seconds while an undercover Gastonia Police ABC officer in a baseball cap and t-shirt watched. Manigault turned to leave, his left hand on the door and his right hand holding the realistic toy gun, when the officer shot.
The officer did not know the gun was fake.
At the time, Gastonia Police Department falsely said Manigault, 43, walked into the store “in an agitated state waiving a gun in his hand making threatening movements.” They said they were sharing that information in response to “false narratives” circulating social media. They wanted to “provide more clarity,” they said.
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The state law on city employee information does bar some disciplinary information from public personnel files. The same law also says city managers, with council approval, “may inform any person of the employment or nonemployment, promotion, demotion, suspension or other disciplinary action, reinstatement, transfer, or termination of a city employee and the reasons for that personnel action.”
In order to do that, the manager or council must put in writing why the release is essential to “maintaining public confidence in the administration of city services or to maintaining the level and quality of city services.”
When asked why this part of the law wasn’t used in Manigault’s case, Gastonia City Manager Michael C. Peoples and City Councilwoman Angela Dreher, who represents the ward where officers shot Manigault, forwarded the Observer’s questions to the police department’s spokesperson.
Police public information officer Bill McGinty told the Observer that Conard opted not to share the outcome of the investigation with the city manager and council and that he did not believe that part of the law applied to Manigault’s case.
The department has been “committed to providing maximum transparency,” said McGinty.
North Carolina Sen. Brad Overcash (R-Gaston) did not respond to requests for comment. In order to change or amend the law in Gastonia, state representatives would have to file a bill, and the N.C. General Assembly would have to pass it into law.
In 1977, the state gave Charlotte’s citizen review board, city manager and chief of police the power to tell the person “aggrieved by the officer’s actions or to that person’s survivor” whether the police officer was disciplined and “the facts relied upon” in determining whether they would be or not.
Similar citywide amendments to the state law exist in Greensboro, Goldsboro and High Point. Fayetteville tried to pass one in 2013, but it did not pass into law.
Insley eventually learned the names of the officers who killed her husband through a public records request. She also learned through that request that the officers each got a $3,000 raise (as part of department-wide raises) three days after Conard sent his letter.
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Were they disciplined? That, she is not allowed to know.
