Another One: NC Repeat Offender and Murderer Who Served Just 5 Years Has Been Arrested for Killing Woman, 74, After Hijacking Ambulance

Another day, another recidivist allegedly killing somebody in America.

Yet again, we’re talking about North Carolina, sadly. Thankfully, it’s not the Charlotte light rail this time, although that’s cold comfort to both the family of the victim and everyone who cares about public safety. This time, however, the alleged killer would be a recidivist murderer.

Yes, that’s right: Even in somewhat-red North Carolina, you can commit murder, get out, and murder again within just a few years. Allegedly.

According to WPDE-TV, 36-year-old Cheyenne Woods has been charged with first-degree murder after authorities say he shot and killed 74-year-old Marie Locklear after a chase in a hijacked EMS vehicle.

Police say that first responders were dispatched to a property in Maxton, North Carolina, for a medical emergency on Saturday. While it’s unclear what the details of said medical emergency were, Woods was being transported to the hospital in an ambulance when he allegedly brandished a firearm and commandeered the vehicle from the EMS workers. He then fled the scene.

Later, while still driving the ambulance, police say he crashed into a car being driven by Locklear. He then got out of the vehicle and shot her. She was transported to the hospital, but later died from her injuries.

“This is yet another senseless act of murder committed by a repeat felon whose criminal history includes a prior murder conviction,” Robeson County Sheriff Burnis Wilkins said.

“The facts of this case are deeply disturbing. The suspect was armed, requested medical assistance, stole an ambulance, crashed it, and then opened fire on an innocent elderly woman without provocation.”

Locklear’s husband of 52 years was also shocked.

“I was at a Christmas dinner. Had finished eating. And I was told my wife had been shot in the arm. And I just could not believe what was going on at that time,” Ronnie Locklear said, adding that his wife had spent most of the day with her terminally ill sister, who was at the hospital.

The victim’s son, Donald Locklear, got a chance to talk with his mother at the hospital before she died.

“She was in a lot of pain. Of course. She couldn’t understand what had happened. She was in a lot of pain,” he said.

And now, of course, we get to Mr. Woods’ extensive criminal background, which should have already landed him behind bars for the rest of his life.

A North Carolina man has been arrested after allegedly hijacking the ambulance that was taking him to the hospital––then crashing it into a car and fatally shooting its driver. #OxygenTrueCrimeNews

Visit the link for more: https://t.co/mJin5tnVBG pic.twitter.com/AV1ZgyfK8c

— Oxygen True Crime (@oxygen) December 16, 2025

WRAL-TV reported that his history with the law began with a 2008 murder and robbery of Jessica Cahoon in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He was convicted only of the robbery with a dangerous weapon charge in 2012. He was released in 2016.

In 2017, he was locked up again after being convicted of a second-degree murder charge which stemmed from a killing in 2010. Despite a 13-year sentence with a minimum of 10 years, he was released in 2022 after only serving five. Officials said this might have been because of credit for time served and good behavior — which, considering he spent the four years prior to his conviction in jail on other charges, doesn’t precisely hold weight.

This comes after a number of high-profile cases involving recidivist offenders, both in North Carolina and elsewhere in the United States, which can be pegged on prima facie insane progressive criminal justice policy.

In Chicago, a man who had been arrested no less than 72 times is facing federal terrorism charges, inter alia, after allegedly lighting a young woman on fire aboard the CTA trains there. In Charlotte, meanwhile, we had both the August stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, allegedly by a mentally ill career criminal, and the December stabbing of a good Samaritan on board the same system, reportedly by an illegal immigrant who was drunk and harassing passengers.

In America, we’ve mostly done away with three-strikes laws. This is a shame, because the evidence is that they work, they generally don’t ensnare innocent individuals, and they stop recidivist crime. A paper published by the Sandra Day O’Connor School of Law at Arizona State University called the effect of incarceration “modest,” and by that they meant “in the neighborhood of two to five serious crimes per year of prison time.”

I guarantee this isn’t modest if you’re at the receiving end of one of these crimes, but that’s beside the point; the same paper said that the criminal justice system “should focus on releasing individuals who are at lowest risk for offending.” If you’ve been in jail for killing somebody and were previously incarcerated for a crime which killed somebody, there’s a ridiculously good argument that you shouldn’t get a third strike, and certainly not a mere 13 years on from your first conviction. This is a too-often repeated outrage that America needs to put a stop to, and posthaste.

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