Home invasion, stabbing probed as separate crimes

A Raleigh police spokesman said Thursday that a home invasion and fatal stabbing over the weekend are being investigated right now as separate crimes.

Jim Sughrue said, however, that detectives have made no final determinations on either.

Ronald Steven Earl Gaither, 23, and Terrell Gaither Hilliard, 19, are each charged with first-degree burglary, common law robbery and larceny of a motor vehicle in the Sunday-morning robbery of a home on Wallingford Drive in north Raleigh.

A short time later, Eleazar Brache Herrera, 20, was stabbed to death a quarter-mile away at the scene of a wreck involving a GMC Envoy that police say Gaither and Hilliard stole earlier that morning.

Neither man has been charged in the stabbing, and police haven't commented on either case.

A friend of Herrera's said he and several of his cousins were out Sunday morning when they happened upon the wrecked Envoy on New Hope Road and that Herrera got out of his car.

Witnesses told 911 operators that they saw a group of men fighting in the street, and when police arrived, Herrera had been stabbed.

He will be buried Saturday at Raleigh Memorial Park. Visitation will be all day Friday at the Brown-Wynne Funeral Home, at 1701 E. Millbrook Road.

Police are still asking anyone who might have seen or heard anything that could relate to either crime to call Raleigh Crime Stoppers at 919-834-4357.