SBI probes fatal Asheville officer-involved shooting on Hendersonville Road

State investigators have opened a fatal officer-involved shooting probe in South Asheville after Asheville police said a man fired through a glass door at officers and was shot during the exchange. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation said its agents responded to the scene and began collecting evidence after the Asheville Police Department and the Buncombe County District Attorney's Office requested the review under standard protocol.

Police said officers were sent at 9:45 p.m. on April 21 to 1987 Hendersonville Road after a report of a person with a gun. The address was later corrected, and the business was identified as Relax Spa in a strip mall. According to police, the suspect fired through a glass door at officers, and officers returned fire and struck him. One Asheville officer sustained non-life-threatening injuries from broken glass.

The SBI identified the deceased suspect as James Jones. He was taken to Mission Hospital after officers secured the scene and died in the early morning hours of April 22. By late Wednesday morning, windows at the South Asheville business were boarded up and glass remained on the ground, with surveillance video from a neighboring business reportedly showing gunshots and officers arriving.

The SBI investigation is now the key official review of what happened inside the strip mall off Hendersonville Road. Police and prosecutors have not released a fuller account of what led to the call, how the encounter developed, or what evidence investigators are weighing. That leaves Buncombe County residents waiting for the findings that will determine how the shooting is characterized and whether the officers' use of force met department and state standards.

The case arrives amid a recent stretch of gun violence in Asheville, where multiple shootings have kept public attention on safety and police response. For neighbors and business owners in South Asheville, the immediate impact is visible at the scene itself: a boarded storefront, shattered glass, a dead man, and an unanswered question that now rests with state investigators.