Nafife Morris Jainlett, 37, of Charlotte, will serve an active prison term of 10 to 13 years following his conviction for breaking and entering, larceny after breaking/entering, and admission of habitual felon status during Catawba County Superior Court on Monday, May 8, 2023.
The Honorable Nathaniel J. Poovey, Superior Court Judge from Catawba County, imposed the terms of the plea arrangement after Jainlett entered his guilty plea on the day his cases were set to go to trial.
The defendant will serve his period of incarceration in the custody of the North Carolina Division of Adult Corrections.
Jainlett’s habitual felon status enhanced the length of his sentence. He has prior felony convictions for breaking/entering in Burke County (April 2019), possession of burglary tools in Rowan County (May 2017) and attempted larceny in Mecklenburg County (October 2014).
On February 25, 2020, officers from Conover Police Department responded to an alarm at a business and discovered a glass front door had been shattered, three display iPhones had been taken, and a fourth was damaged.
Security footage showed that the masked defendant broke into the store and stole the phones. When shattering the door, he cut himself, and blood samples were collected from different locations around the site of the break-in.
Those samples returned as a match to Jainlett, and his blood also matched blood taken from him during an investigation by the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office regarding a breaking/entering case in the Asheville area.
The case was investigated by Investigator Jerry Lapage of Conover Police Department and Investigator Derek Trivett, formerly of Conover Police Department. Assistant District Attorney Howard Wellons handled prosecution for the State with assistance from Legal Assistant Meredith Scott.