An 18-year-old woman, Natalie Ruth Howie, was found shot and pronounced dead inside a home on Applewood Lane near Lawyers Road in east Charlotte on May 21, 2025. Early dispatches reported a single person dead at the scene; later obituary and funeral notices identified the victim as Natalie, a senior at Independence High School in Mint Hill who worked at Chick-fil-A, planned to attend college, and was a National Honor Society member.

Local news and incident trackers logged the address as 7611 Applewood Lane and consistently described the event as a fatal shooting. Those reports noted no arrests and offered no description of a suspect. A local blog later claimed police told it the death was a suicide, but no formal police news release supporting that claim has been published and mainstream coverage continued to report a shooting with no suspect named.

If anyone knew Natalie, lived near Applewood Lane, or has information about what happened that night, please share tips with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department.