{"id":711,"date":"2026-05-26T13:37:45","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/charlotterelocationguide.com\/?p=711"},"modified":"2026-05-26T13:37:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T13:37:45","slug":"lawsuit-man-was-framed-by-childhood-friend-charged-by-cmpd-then-fired","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/charlotterelocationguide.com\/?p=711","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit: Man was framed by childhood friend, charged by CMPD, then fired"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police charged the wrong man with felony drug crimes and misdemeanor breaking or entering, which hurt his reputation and cost him a teaching job, he told The Charlotte Observer.<\/p>\n

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\u201cYou go and you serve your country \u2014 you would never expect to come home and something like this happens to you,\u201d said military veteran Kendrick Gonzalez, who filed the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

Yet it did happen, he and his attorney said, and left him without his jobs as a middle school football coach and science teacher.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez has sued three officers and the city of Charlotte for malicious prosecution and gross negligence in the 2023 incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy failing to properly train, supervise, or discipline its employees on this issue, the City has shown a deliberate indifference to a highly likely recurring situation,\u201d the Feb. 14 complaint said.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez said he hopes his lawsuit closes a likely policy gap. He suspects other people have been in his position.<\/p>\n

The three officers named as defendants and the city all asked a judge to toss the lawsuit on May 15.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won\u2019t be able to provide a comment on pending litigation,\u201d CMPD said in an email to The Charlotte Observer.<\/p>\n

WCNC first reported<\/a> on Gonzalez\u2019s lawsuit.<\/p>\n

The ordeal began in February 2023, when three Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers arrested a man sleeping in a hotel room that was supposed to be vacant, according to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n

First, the suspect told police his name was Khalil Wiggins. When they kept questioning him, he said he was Kendrick Gonzalez.<\/p>\n

In fact, \u201cKendrick Gonzalez\u201d was Kemardrick Sherrod \u2014 a childhood friend of the real Kendrick Gonzalez.<\/p>\n

The two lived on the same street growing up, and Gonzalez was friends with Sherrod and his siblings, he said.<\/p>\n

He said he remembered when Sherrod started getting arrested. They drifted apart naturally while Gonzalez was focused on school.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez\u2019s lawsuit said Sherrod \u201cdid not provide any identifying documents\u201d to the police, and even after they checked a state Department of Motor Vehicles record and thought a photograph attached did not look like their man, they still arrested him and took him to the Mecklenburg County jail.<\/p>\n

The charges: felony possession of heroin, misdemeanor breaking or entering, resisting public officer and possession of drug paraphernalia.<\/p>\n

On Feb. 28 that year, the county clerk\u2019s office sent a letter to Gonzalez\u2019s home in Graham notifying him about a May 1 court date.<\/p>\n

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\u201cHow in the world do I got a court date in Charlotte for some charges I didn\u2019t do?\u201d he remembered asking his wife.<\/p>\n

What he didn\u2019t know was that a conviction had already been filed under his name, according to the lawsuit. Sherrod pleaded guilty under Gonzalez\u2019s name to the breaking or entering charge on March 1, before the letter arrived, according to the lawsuit and Gonzalez\u2019 attorney.<\/p>\n

When Gonzalez did an internet search, he started to piece together what had happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cI found the mugshot of him with my name. It had my mother\u2019s address and all of my information as well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

At some point in the confusion \u2014 the timing bleeds together because of how stressful it was, he said \u2014 he called and talked with someone working at CMPD. The person he spoke with said the charges showed as pending, but nothing would actually be on his record because it was going to be moved to Sherrod, Gonzalez recalled.<\/p>\n

Still, the charges cost him his new job teaching science to eighth graders and a different job coaching middle school football players.<\/p>\n

\u201cI literally taught one day \u2014 taught one day \u2014<\/i> and then I went to practice after school that same day, and that\u2019s when they called me and were like, \u2018Yeah, you have these felonies \u2014 full-blown, you\u2019ve got to get out of here. Got to go.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After his military service, Gonzalez said he and his wife moved to the Alamance County area and tried to be involved in the community. It took time to build a good reputation, he said.<\/p>\n

With the false charges, he was in a situation he could not explain his way out of, he said. He failed the background check and his employer wasn\u2019t interested in hearing his explanation, he said.<\/p>\n

For attorney Dominique Camm to clear Gonzalez\u2019s name was a long, multistep process, the attorney said.<\/p>\n

But Camm said that even today, after the record has been corrected officially and the charges under Gonzalez\u2019s name have been expunged, some bells cannot be unrung.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are still pockets and places where this information still exists,\u201d Camm said, like private mugshot websites.<\/p>\n

The betrayal from a childhood friend and the embarrassment in a place where Gonzalez worked to build a good reputation left him with an \u201cinsurmountable\u201d mental health toll, he said. He is not interested in going back to the old coaching or teaching jobs.<\/p>\n

Today, he is studying medical coding and taking care of a new baby.<\/p>\n

He and Camm said they hope the lawsuit will clarify how CMPD handles situations where someone lies about their identity in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just want to make sure there\u2019s a uniform policy that prevents this from happening, in this area, to anyone else,\u201d Camm said.<\/p>\n

Read more Which of Charlotte\u2019s oldest restaurants are still standing? 20 spots to visit<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Alamance County man was falsely charged after someone else used his name with Charlotte, North Carolina, police, according to a lawsuit filed in Mecklenburg.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-read-todays-edition"],"yoast_head":"\nLawsuit: Man was framed by childhood friend, charged by CMPD, then fired - \u0421harlotte Relocation Guide<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/charlotterelocationguide.com\/?p=711\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lawsuit: Man was framed by childhood friend, charged by CMPD, then fired - 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