Fairview Man Pleads Guilty to Manslaughter in 2023 East Asheville Stabbing

Tyler Perry Laughter, 30, of Fairview entered a guilty plea March 30 to voluntary manslaughter in Buncombe County Superior Court and was sentenced the same day to between 121 and 158 months in the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction for the stabbing death of Jason Oneal Edmonds in the Reddick Road area of East Asheville.

Superior Court Judge Alan Z. Thornburg imposed the sentence, which the Buncombe County District Attorney's Office described as the top of the aggravated range for a Level 4 offender under North Carolina's structured sentencing guidelines. The term amounts to roughly 10 to 13 years.

Laughter had originally been charged with first-degree murder. Prosecutors determined there was insufficient evidence of premeditation and deliberation to sustain that charge and accepted a voluntary manslaughter plea instead. Voluntary manslaughter, a Class D felony under North Carolina law, covers intentional killings committed in the heat of passion or under mitigating circumstances that fall short of the planning required for a first-degree murder conviction.

Edmonds, 46, was stabbed once in the chest around 10 p.m. on October 15, 2023, at a home on the 60 block of Reddick Road in the Azalea neighborhood off Tunnel Road. Asheville Police Department officers responded to the scene after a report of a violent assault and found Edmonds with apparent traumatic injuries. EMS transported him to Mission Hospital, where he died. He would have turned 47 two days later, on October 17. Laughter and Edmonds had been friends at the time of the killing.

Laughter was not arrested until October 25, 2023, when Asheville police took him into custody on Sweeten Creek Road. He resisted arrest and was found in possession of methamphetamine at the time of his apprehension. Court records show his criminal history extended more than a decade before the 2023 killing, a factor that contributed to his Level 4 offender classification at sentencing.

The case was the sixth homicide recorded in Asheville in 2023. The plea closes the matter without a jury trial, more than two years after Edmonds died on Reddick Road.