Sheriff's deputies in Cabarrus County were dispatched to Harris Depot Park in Harrisburg, North Carolina, at roughly 6:58 a.m. on June 6, 2026, after a report of a body found inside the 3.68-acre park. The body was later identified as 36-year-old Cedric Tayuhe, a Congolese immigrant and community activist who lived in Charlotte and was found hanging from a tree. It would take more than two months for his death to draw broad public attention.
Details about the precise dispatch time and location came from The NC Beat, which reported that Harris Depot Park sits roughly 15 miles northeast of Charlotte, just across the Cabarrus County line. According to Charlotte Alerts News, Tayuhe spoke at events representing Africa and had advocated for civil and human rights. The outlet also reported that he was likely seen by a park visitor, though the exact length of time his body remained in the woods before discovery is unknown.
Case Remains Open Despite Suicide Determination
Cabarrus County law enforcement told Charlotte Alerts News that its investigation determined no foul play was involved in Tayuhe's death. Separately, the Cabarrus County Sheriff's Office said in August that the case remains open and pending, and that physical evidence gathered at the scene was consistent with suicide — a statement issued, per the same NC Beat report, only after community members began questioning why so little information about the death had been made public. Officials have said full investigative findings cannot yet be released while the case stays active.
News of Tayuhe's death spread mainly through grassroots and social media channels, with public awareness and online commentary expanding sharply in mid-August, roughly two months after his body was found. The NC Beat reported that residents noted the delayed timeline fueled heightened interest at local government meetings, as people began asking why a death in a public park had gone largely unreported for so long.
Family Raising Funds to Bring Him Home to Congo
Tayuhe's family launched a fundraising campaign on GoFundMe in June to cover the costs of returning his remains to Lubumbashi, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where he was born. The campaign describes him as a Congolese immigrant and community activist whose life in Charlotte included advocacy work representing African communities. Charlotte Alerts News also noted that Tayuhe had broken his leg in 2020, though the dossier does not connect that injury to his death.
Echoes of a Teenager's Death Weeks Earlier
Tayuhe's death came less than a month after another Black Congolese immigrant, 16-year-old Juliana Umba Nzita, was found hanging from a tree on church grounds along West Sugar Creek Road in Charlotte on May 8, 2026. As Hoodline previously reported, police also ruled Nzita's death a suicide, a finding that met with public skepticism from the start. Her family later retained civil rights attorney Jill Collen Jefferson, commissioned an independent autopsy with DNA analysis, and requested release of 911 audio and police files. Community advocates have since drawn direct comparisons between how authorities handled the two Congolese immigrants' deaths, according to the same Hoodline report.
Activists Push for Federal Review
The pattern has drawn renewed attention to the federal Emmett Till Antilynching Act, signed into law in March 2022, which designates lynching as a federal hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Civil rights advocates and online organizers launched a petition in August urging the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division to form a federal task force reviewing hanging deaths of Black individuals across the South, according to the Care2 Petition Site, which noted the petition specifically cites unresolved cases in North Carolina and Mississippi. The Charlotte Alerts News report that first detailed Tayuhe's case also noted broader claims that a number of Black Americans have recently been found dead hanging from trees around the country, though it did not attribute that claim to any specific agency or dataset.
Harrisburg is a suburban town of about 32,000 residents in Cabarrus County, bordering Mecklenburg County, where primary law enforcement services are contracted through the Cabarrus County Sheriff's Office rather than a dedicated municipal police department, per Citizen Portal. Harris Depot Park itself is a small, wooded municipal park with walking trails, a fishing pond, old-growth hardwood trees, and a nine-hole disc golf course, operated by the Town of Harrisburg's Parks and Recreation Department from dawn to dusk. For now, the Sheriff's Office says the investigation into Tayuhe's death remains open, even as it maintains that the evidence gathered points to suicide.
