A Charlotte man facing five felony indictments for allegedly making mass shooting threats against local public schools was released from custody only days before students across the district were set to head back to classrooms.
Jail records show 33-year-old Drew Andres Owens left the Mecklenburg County Jail at 11:30 a.m. on Aug. 22. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools students were scheduled to begin the new school year on Aug. 25.
Owens was indicted by a Mecklenburg County grand jury in March 2025 on five felony counts of communicating threats of mass violence on educational property. He has entered not guilty pleas, and the charges are still moving through the court system.
Drew Andres Owens, 33, was released from the Mecklenburg County Jail at 11:30 a.m. Aug. 22, according to jail records reviewed by News Outlet. (Mecklenburg County Jail)
Prosecutors allege that four of the threats were sent by email on Feb. 15, 2025, and named West Charlotte High School, Ardrey Kell High School, Community House Middle School and Hawk Ridge Elementary School.
Court records reviewed by News Outlet state that Owens is accused of sending messages that threatened to “slaughter staff and students.”
A fifth indictment centers on an alleged threat mailed to Garinger High School. According to an affidavit, the letter claimed that a student armed with two shotguns and an AR-15 would carry out a mass shooting. School officials later found that no student with the name listed in the threat was enrolled at the school, the affidavit said.
The warrant affidavit also says Drew Owens’ father, Darryl Owens, who works as an ROTC instructor at West Charlotte High School, told police he believed his son was behind the threats.
Darryl Owens allegedly told authorities that his son had harassed relatives, neighbors and family friends after being removed from the family home in 2021, and had sent unsigned emails and letters threatening to kill or shoot people at multiple locations.
The father told police he had previously obtained a restraining order against his son, that Owens had been arrested for violating it and that the order was later dismissed. He also told police that Owens had recently sat outside neighbors’ homes and photographed his car at West Charlotte High School “to try to lure him outside.”
According to court records, the bond in the four-school case was lowered from $135,000 to $60,000 in May 2026. Docket records indicate the four-school case had originally been set at a $135,000 secured bond with electronic monitoring in February 2025.
A judge reduced that amount to $60,000 on May 1, 2026. The separate case tied to Garinger High School carried a secured bond of $15,000. Owens satisfied the court-ordered pretrial bond conditions and was released Saturday, Aug. 22.
Court records showed a $60,000 secured bond in the four-school case and a $15,000 secured bond in the Garinger case. A professional surety posted the $60,000 bond the previous Friday night.
An aerial view of the skyline of downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, on Oct. 12, 2023. (Omar Vega/Getty Images)
WSOC previously reported that Owens’ record included arrests for resisting arrest and shoplifting. The local outlet did not report a total number of prior arrests and News Outlet has reached out to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department for additional details.
Following his release, parents told WSOC that they are nervous to send their kids off to school as the school year kicks off.
“Is he going to show up at one of the schools? It’s not good,” said one parent. “I’m not going to feel at ease, I’m not going to pretend it’s OK.”
“In this situation it’s confusing because he had a $200K bond,” another parent said. “He’s clearly a public safety threat, so what took the threat level down?”
“He’s out and that’s it, and the rest of us have to deal with it and teachers have to go to school on Tuesday and deal with it,” another parent said.
It was not immediately clear if Owens had an attorney representing him.
