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Nafife Morris Jainlett
Courtesy of Nathan Key, District Attorney's Office, 36th Prosecutorial District

Charlotte Man Receives Minimum Prison Term Of Ten Years For Break-in To Catawba County Business

37-year-old Nafife Morris Jainlett of Charlotte, will serve an active prison term of 10 to 13 years following his conviction for breaking & entering, larceny after breaking & entering, and his admission of habitual felon status. Jainlett was convicted during Catawba County Superior Court on Monday (May 8).

The Honorable Nathaniel J. Poovey, Superior Court Judge from Catawba County, imposed the terms of the plea arrangement after Jainlett entered his guilty plea on the day his cases were set to go to trial.

Jainlett’s habitual felon status enhanced the length of his sentence. He has prior felony convictions for breaking & entering in Burke County (April 2019), possession of burglary tools in Rowan County (May 2017) and attempted larceny in Mecklenburg County (October 2014).

On February 25, 2020, officers from the Conover Police Department responded to an alarm at a business and discovered a glass front door had been shattered, three display iPhones had been taken, and a fourth was damaged. Security footage showed that the masked defendant broke into the store and stole the phones. When shattering the door, he cut himself, and blood samples were collected from different locations around the site of the break-in.

Those samples returned as a match to Jainlett, and his blood also matched blood taken from him during an investigation by the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office regarding a breaking & entering case in the Asheville area.

The case was investigated by Investigator Jerry Lapage of the Conover Police Department and Investigator Derek Trivett, formerly of the Conover Police Department. Assistant District Attorney Howard Wellons handled prosecution for the State with assistance from Legal Assistant Meredith Scott.