Police believe a body found Thursday in a field in Rock Hill is that of a 44-year-old Charlotte Uber driver who had been missing since Saturday.
Marlo Johnis Medina-Chevez, who had taken a job as an Uber driver to earn extra money for a family vacation, left his Charlotte home Saturday night to pick up a passenger, expecting to be gone only an hour or two. He never returned.
“Unfortunately, I don’t bring good news,” Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Major Cam Selvey said at a news conference. “This was not the outcome we had hoped for.”
Although a medical examiner still needs to positively identify the body, police believe it is Medina-Chevez based on clothing, physical stature and race, Selvey said. The body was not found buried, he said.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officers, along with investigators from the FBI, Rock Hill Police Department and York County Sheriff’s Office began searching Thursday afternoon off Mount Gallant Road in Rock Hill, according to CMPD.
Selvey declined to say how CMPD learned Medina-Chevez’s body might be in Rock Hill or how police believe he died. A medical examiner will determine the cause of death.
Once the body is positively identified, Selvey said, additional charges will be brought against two men arrested in Maryland who police said used Medina-Chevez’s credit card and were driving his car.
Diontray Divan Adams, 24, and James Aaron Stevens, 20, remain in custody in Maryland, Selvey said. Police arrested the pair in Maryland on Monday night and charged Adams with financial credit card fraud and outstanding Maryland warrants, and Stevens with possession of a stolen vehicle.
Police know of no relationship the suspects had with Medina-Chevez, Selvey said.
“Still a lot of developments, still a lot of moving parts and pieces in this very active investigation,” CMPD spokesman Rob Tufano said at Thursday’s news conference.
Family members said Medina-Chevez, a native of Honduras, worked full time at a window and door manufacturer in addition to his Uber job.
On Saturday, he left his house to pick up a passenger at 9:45 p.m.
“I told him not to go to work, but he insisted,” his wife, Elisa Urbina, told the Spanish-language newspaper Hola Noticias. “He told me he would only go to work for a couple of hours. He promised. He just left to pick up a passenger and, as he had not worked in the last few days, he did not want to lose his place.”
Adams and Stevens were arrested after police began investigating a fraudulent use of Medina-Chavez’s credit card. At 11:50 p.m. Monday, CMPD detectives were notified that Maryland State Police received a license plate reader hit on Medina-Chevez’s 2008 Nissan Pathfinder. It had been spotted near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
The Maryland Transportation Authority Police then stopped the Pathfinder and detained the four occupants. Adams and Stevens were taken to the Maryland Transportation Authority Police Department in Annapolis, where they were interviewed by CMPD homicide detectives. The other occupants were released and not charged.
Court records show James Stevens lived in Fayetteville until 2014, then moved to Mecklenburg County. He has been charged twice with offenses, including an October 2016 case of communicating threats in Mecklenburg County. The outcome was not clear in court records. Court records show Diontray Adams was a Charlotte resident when he was arrested in 2015 for an offense in Rowan County. Details of that offense are not included in court records.
The body found is the second in just weeks in the wooded areas off Mount Gallant Road north of Celanese Road in Rock Hill.
On May 1, York County deputies found the body of Jamie Magras of Rock Hill in woods near a creek and bridge near where the body believed to be Medina-Chevez was found Thursday afternoon. Magras, 18, who lived nearby off Twin Lakes Road, had been missing four days when her body was found. Police said at the time that she had left her home of her own accord and that no foul play was suspected in her death.
York County Sheriff Kevin Tolson told The (Rock Hill) Herald late Thursday the cases are unrelated.
