Buncombe County employee resigns after felony assault charges, records show

A Buncombe County employee resigned in April after felony assault charges followed an April 3 arrest, leaving county residents with only a thin public record of how the case was handled inside government. Records show the employee had been charged with two felonies, and his personnel file later listed the resignation in April.

The resignation record did not identify the employee’s name or department in the public materials available with the case, which makes it harder to judge whether the person worked in a public-facing role or held a back-office post. That missing context matters in a county where personnel decisions can determine how quickly supervisors act, what is disclosed, and whether a worker remains on leave while a criminal case moves forward.

Buncombe County’s personnel ordinance gives some offices a different disciplinary framework than the rest of county government. The ordinance, written under Chapter 153A, says disciplinary provisions do not apply the same way to employees of the Sheriff’s Office, the Register of Deeds Office and the Board of Elections. That structure helps explain why local personnel files can be narrower than residents might expect when a county worker is arrested on felony charges.

The case lands amid closer scrutiny of public employees in Asheville and Buncombe County. In the past nine months, six law-enforcement officers in the area were arrested on charges ranging from drunk driving to perjury, a streak that has kept pressure on agencies to explain how they monitor conduct and respond when it crosses into the criminal courts. A separate recent case also involved a former Buncombe County pretrial services employee who was indicted on felony charges by a grand jury, according to state investigators.

For Buncombe County, the key question is not only how one employee’s case ended, but how the county documents leave, resignation and discipline when serious felony charges surface. Those records shape public trust in the Board of Commissioners, the Sheriff’s Office and the county offices that serve Asheville and the rest of Buncombe County.