Asheville man arrested for alleged death threat against former DA Greg Newman
ASHEVILLE — An Asheville man has been charged with threatening to kill former Henderson County District Attorney Greg Newman and the interim counsel at the North Carolina State Bar through a voicemail he left with the government agency.
An officer with the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office arrested Grant Paul Dalton, 38, on Nov. 8, after the N.C. State Bar received one or more voicemails in which Dalton allegedly threatened to kill former DA and current Asheville private attorney Newman by saying “he was going to start using bullets against people who are a problem,” his arrest warrant says.
Newman — who is now senior associate at King Law after being removed as district attorney for Henderson, Polk and Transylvania counties following a special 2021 hearing for his "willful misconduct in office" — has been representing Dalton on his ongoing superior court case for unrelated charges dating back to 2020, according to court documents.
The Citizen Times reached out to Newman, who was unavailable to comment before press time.
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Dalton also allegedly left a voicemail that said he was going to “drive to Raleigh and murder Carmen Bannon,” interim counsel with the N.C. State Bar, according to his arrest warrant.
Bannon told the Citizen Times that the message was left in a general voicemail box at the state bar, and the number Dalton used to call was determined to originate from inside the Buncombe County Detention Facility, “so there wasn’t any potential that it was actually going to happen or that he was on his way here.”
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Her investigative team listened to it and conferred with law enforcement, but Bannon hasn’t listened to the voicemail because “it doesn’t make my life better to listen to such things,” she said. Bannon also said she has never met Dalton and doesn’t know what prompted him to make the threats.
“Unfortunately, it’s not that uncommon in this job,” Bannon said. “I started working here in 2006 and it was not routine for members of the public to be threatening employees of this state agency on a semi-regular basis and now it doesn’t really feel that remarkable.”
The 38-year-old is currently being held at the Buncombe County Detention Facility under no bond for these charges. Dalton still faces multiple other unrelated charges from a 2020 city bus incident and alleged crimes against an ABC officer, for which he has a $300,000 bond.
Dalton had a court date on Nov. 9 for his two charges of threating to kill or inflict serious bodily injury on an executive legal court officer, a Class I felony. The Buncombe County Clerk’s Office does not have an attorney listed for Dalton on this case yet.
On Aug. 20, 2020, Asheville police were called in to help with a traffic stop of a city bus, initiated by agents with the Asheville Alcoholic Beverage Commission, the Citizen Times previously reported. The agents were attempting to serve warrants on Dalton for a July 2020 incident where an ABC officer was beaten and his vehicle stolen, and for an earlier vandalism of an ABC vehicle.
About 90 minutes of negotiation then ensued between APD's crisis negotiation teams and Dalton, who had barricaded himself inside a city bus while armed with a knife, police said. The situation turned nearly deadly when police shot Dalton in the thigh after he disembarked from the bus. Dalton had started stabbing himself in the neck, according to police.
The Citizen Times previously spoke with Dalton's mother, Sheryl Pritchard, who said Dalton has struggled with mental illness and was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at age 18.
After recovering from the gunshot at Mission Hospital, Dalton was taken to the Buncombe County Detention Facility and charged with communicating threats and felony assault with a deadly weapon on a government official for this incident.
Ryley Ober is the Public Safety Reporter for Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Email her at rober@gannett.com and follow her on Twitter @ryleyober
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Ex-DA Greg Newman gets death threat from Asheville man
