'We're doing time:' Family seeking answers in Belmont man's death

When Andy Tench left his home in the early morning hours of March 25, his plan was to celebrate his birthday. He had recently escaped an abusive relationship, said his mother, Tracie Blanton, and this year was the first birthday since then that he would have been able to celebrate in years.

"He asked me to go with him that night. I feel tremendous guilt because I didn't go with him," Blanton said.

Tench went to The Bar at 316, an LGBTQ+ friendly bar, in Charlotte. What happened after that is murky, but Tench is believed to be dead. D'Shaun Montrell Robinson, 26, was seen on surveillance footage making purchases at Dick's Sporting Goods and Target in Matthews using Tench's bank card, according to an affidavit from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. Surveillance footage from Target also shows Robinson using Tench's car.

Court documents didn't say how Tench died but said that Robinson abandoned Tench's body in a garbage can without contacting emergency services. Tench's body has not been recovered.

"My son's biggest fear – he lived in Colorado seven years, and I don't know how many times he called me… and he said, 'If anything ever happened to me and I died, would y'all come get my body and bury me?' Y'all wouldn't leave me laying on the side of the road, would you?'" Blanton said. "That was one of his biggest fears, and it's coming true."

Blanton is deeply skeptical of Robinson's story, but without her son's body, not only can she not give him a proper burial, but there is little evidence that would tell investigators what truly happened that night.

"I was just telling my daughter, it's constantly going through my head, did he yell out, 'Momma, help me!' Did he suffer? Was it quick?" she said. "That guy could literally give those answers, and they could give us Andy back, and he won't do it.

Robinson told police that Tench died, and he disposed of the body, court document say.

"He committed a crime, but he don't want to do the time for it," she added. "He wants everybody else to do time, and that's what I feel like we're doing. We're doing time… I need that boy to tell the truth, not just for me, but for Andy."

Much of the reason she doesn't believe Robinson's story hinges on the fact that he was seen in surveillance footage going on shopping using her son's bank card.

"You don't go on shopping sprees when it's an accidental death," she said. "He kept Andy's phone. He kept Andy's belongings."

For more than two weeks, Blanton dedicated herself to searching for her son, on the hope that he would be found alive. Now, her search is much darker. She wants to recover his body, even if it means personally digging through a county landfill.

"I feel like if they find Andy's body, they're going to find the truth of what that guy did to him," Blanton said. "I don't believe for a second his story that he's telling… I just feel it down in the core of me."

Blanton said that the 2023 holiday season was her first in years in which all her children were present.

"We had a Thanksgiving together, and we had our last Christmas together," she said, speaking through tears. "I posted, 'Best Christmas present ever,' because that's the first time in seven years that I got to have Christmas with all my kids, and now that'll be the last Christmas we'll all be together."

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: 'We're doing time:' Family seeking answers in Belmont man's death