U.S. marshals arrest Asheville murder suspect in 2024 killing case

U.S. marshals arrested Iken Michtreal Wallace in Chesapeake, Virginia, on June 11, closing a long-running fugitive search in the 2024 killing of Denzel McKnight. Wallace, who Asheville police said was wanted for first-degree murder, had been sought for months while the case remained open across county and state lines.

McKnight was shot just after 2:24 a.m. on July 26, 2024, at Hillcrest Apartments on Atkinson Street in Asheville. Police said officers found the 32-year-old with a gunshot wound to the abdomen and rushed him to Mission Hospital, where he died. At the time, Asheville police identified the killing as the city’s seventh homicide of the year.

The search for Wallace stretched well beyond Asheville. WLOS reported that he had been wanted since October 2024, and the U.S. Marshals Service had offered a $3,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. His capture in Chesapeake shows how a Buncombe County homicide can become an interagency pursuit, with federal marshals and Chesapeake Sheriff’s Office deputies working outside North Carolina to bring in a suspect accused of leaving the area.

For McKnight’s family, the arrest marks the first major movement in a case that has hung over Asheville for nearly two years. For the neighborhood around Hillcrest Apartments, it is a reminder of how long violent crime can remain unresolved after the first police response fades from view. The arrest also gives investigators and prosecutors a chance to move the case from the search for a fugitive into the courtroom process in Buncombe County.

The case lands against a grim backdrop for Asheville. Police said 2024 was the city’s deadliest year on record, and North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation county-by-agency data show Asheville recorded 12 murders that year. McKnight’s death was part of that violence, and Wallace’s arrest now returns one of the city’s most closely watched homicide cases to the local justice system.