Up to 200 cars swarmed the parking lot of Faith City Church in Huntersville over the weekend, with surveillance video showing drivers performing burnouts, a person using a machete to send sparks across the pavement, and gunshots ringing out across the property. By morning, the pastor found bullet casings scattered on the ground and a fence post knocked over where the crowd had forced its way in.
Senior Pastor Amere May Sr. said the chaos marked the fourth time his church's grounds have been overrun this way, and the second time since last Wednesday alone. As reported by WSOC-TV, the church sent its surveillance footage to the station, and the recordings captured both muzzle flashes and the sound of gunshots during the gathering. May believes teens are behind each of the takeovers that have hit his property.
“We deserve better,” May said, describing a congregation that simply wants to use its own parking lot without fear. He said residents in the area just want to enjoy the weather and their lives without being shot at, and that the church now feels vulnerable every time a crowd assembles.
Pattern Echoes Birkdale Village Disturbances
The Faith City incidents aren't happening in isolation. Takeovers have also struck Birkdale Village, the Huntersville shopping and entertainment district that made headlines in February when it enforced a 6 p.m. weekend curfew for unaccompanied minors after a viral gathering of 200 to 300 youths swarmed roadways and danced atop trapped vehicles, according to WCNC. The problem resurfaced in August, when Huntersville Police had to order a crowd of roughly 300 young people to disperse from the same shopping center, per the Carolina Journal.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department confirmed that North Division leadership met with the church following the incident, and the investigation remains ongoing. Whether anyone will face charges over the weekend gathering is still unclear.
What North Carolina's Takeover Law Allows
North Carolina lawmakers gave police sharper tools to go after these gatherings when they passed Senate Bill 91 in July 2023, codified as NCGS § 20-141.10. The statute made unauthorized stunt driving in public vehicular areas — a definition that explicitly covers private lots like a church's, when open to public traffic — a Class A1 misdemeanor carrying a minimum $1,000 fine for a first offense, according to the Legislative Reporting Service.
A second takeover conviction within 24 months escalates to a Class H felony, and fines can double based on the seized vehicle's value; vehicles involved in takeovers may be seized under specified procedures, the same legislative summary notes. The law doesn't stop at drivers, either — it criminalizes spectators and online organizers too, making social media coordination of a takeover a Class A1 misdemeanor and repeat spectator attendance a misdemeanor as well.
Charlotte's Task Force and the Scale of the Problem Regionally
CMPD has built out a dedicated response to the broader trend. The department established a Street Takeover Task Force within its Transportation Division back in 2023 specifically to target organized stunt driving across Mecklenburg County, and the unit's workload gives a sense of scale: in the first half of 2025 alone, it responded to 25 organized takeover events, issued 111 warrants, made 7 arrests, recovered 6 firearms, and seized 23 vehicles, according to statistics reported by WCNC.
Some of those operations have netted serious money. A joint CMPD and North Carolina State Highway Patrol operation in June 2025 seized five luxury vehicles valued at more than $1.5 million, tied to national street racing networks operating in the region, per a City of Charlotte report. On the juvenile side, CMPD's Juvenile Accountability and Diversion Empowerment team conducted 84 family home visits and made 97 youth-related arrests during the same six-month stretch, aimed at curbing minors' involvement in group offenses.
Police in the county have also started going after parents directly. In June, 13 parents in Charlotte received citations for contributing to the delinquency of a minor after their kids turned up at an uptown takeover, a mechanism Hoodline detailed in its report on that uptown teen takeover chaos.
A Costly Fix the Church Can't Yet Afford
For now, Faith City Church is left weighing its own options. May said the congregation hopes to buy an iron fence to surround the property, but the price tag runs into the hundreds of thousands of dollars — money the church doesn't currently have. Until that changes, he said he wants to see more action from authorities to prevent future gatherings from forming in the first place, even as services continue uninterrupted at the Huntersville church.
