Police search Cape Fear River for missing man
Six months after a Fayetteville man disappeared, police on Thursday searched the Cape Fear River for his body.
Charles Anthony Fuentes, 31, was last seen leaving Izzy’s Sports Bar, at 150 Andrews Road, in the early morning hours of March 3. Grainy security video from outside the bar shows a man believed to be Fuentes leaving with two men in a dark-colored 2007 Lexus with license plate PCE-2228.
Police considered the other two men, identified as Mark Allen Verhasselt, 42, and Ryan Dewain Chavis, 23, as persons of interest in the case. But Verhasselt was shot to death in July in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
Chavis was arrested last month and charged as an accessory after the fact to murder. He remains in the Cumberland County jail under a $250,000 bond.
Sources close to the investigation have told the family Charles Fuentes' body was mutilated and the remains weighed down with two 40-pound weights before being thrown from a bridge into the Cape Fear River.
Police declined to comment Thursday on the investigation, but the department's dive team was on the Cape Fear River for several hours Thursday, returning shortly after 1 p.m. and loaded whatever they found into a large plastic tub. Numerous officers also were on Ramsey Street near Interstate 295.
Mayra Fuentes said police told her her son was murdered in an apartment behind some businesses in the 4800 block of Ramsey Street – about a mile from where he was last seen – and dumped in the river.
"They say he was taken from the bar to an apartment, and in that apartment, they beat him up to death," Mayra Fuentes said. "Then they had the body, and they had to dispose of the body, and they took him and threw him in the Cape Fear River."
The family was told that, the day after Charles Fuentes is believed to have been killed, the carpet in the apartment was replaced and the walls were painted.
Mayra Fuentes said police were told a month ago that her son's body had been dumped in the river, and she's upset with delays in the investigation.
"We've been so patient," she said. "I trust the police are doing the right thing because I want these people who are guilty to get, you know – I want justice."
