Greensboro man charged in 2022 concealment of death case

A separate arrest in Greensboro pushed a 2022 death investigation back into court, turning long-quiet evidence into a felony concealment charge against Rae-Shawn Demetrius Martin.

Martin, of High Point, was arrested May 18 after police say he was reported for several violent crimes. While investigators worked through that case, they found probable cause to charge him in the older death case. At his first court appearance May 19, a judge ordered him held without bond, and he remained jailed at the Guilford County Detention Center.

The charge reaches back to a death from 2022, but Greensboro police are withholding details until the victim’s family has been notified. That delay leaves the public with only a partial picture, even as investigators build a case that could answer why the death was concealed and who was involved. For families, that sequence matters: notification comes before disclosure, and the criminal case moves forward only after detectives believe they have enough to act.

North Carolina law treats concealment of death as a Class I felony. The statute says a person commits the offense by intentionally failing to notify law enforcement of a death or by secretly burying or otherwise secretly disposing of a dead human body. If the death of a child is concealed, the offense rises to a Class H felony.

Martin’s new charge also comes as Greensboro continues to deal with serious violent-crime cases tied to concealment allegations. On May 3, WFMY News 2 reported that Greensboro had reached 10 homicides for the year when Djibril Sow was charged with first-degree murder and concealment of a death in connection with the death of Laquasia Shamecca Fields at a home on Glencraig Avenue. That broader pattern shows how concealment cases can sit dormant until another arrest, another witness statement or another piece of evidence opens them back up.

Martin was also charged May 20 with attempted second-degree forcible rape, second-degree kidnapping, interfering with emergency communications and assault on a female in connection with a separate April 4 sexual assault investigation on New Garden Road. That case appears to have been the catalyst that brought the older death investigation back into view.

For Guilford County, the case is a reminder that some serious investigations do not end when a scene goes cold. They resurface when detectives connect older facts to a new arrest, and the next steps will likely depend on what police can disclose after the victim’s family is notified and prosecutors continue building the case.