Editor’s Note: This article contains content that may not be suitable for children.
BY MIKE FUHRMAN
The allegations contained in the latest whistleblower retaliation lawsuit filed against the Town of Mooresville and senior town officials include embarrassing new details about Mayor Chris Carney’s after-hours conduct in Town Hall.
Equally disturbing, however, are the allegations lodged against senior town officials — including the town manager, police chief and town attorney — in the federal lawsuit filed on behalf of the town’s former Innovation and Technology director.
Christopher Lee is the third former town employee to file a federal lawsuit against the town, Carney, and other officials in connection with the mayor’s actions in the early morning hours of October 10, 2024, when he spent more than four hours in Town Hall with a former town communications contractor.
In the 58-page complaint filed Wednesday by attorneys Christopher Adkins and Christerfer Purkey, Lee claims that after he reviewed CCTV footage and digital records detailing Carney and contractor Jaime Gatton’s activities that night, he reported the incident to senior town officials.
Instead of conducting an investigation, the lawsuit alleges, Town Manager Tracey Jerome, Police Chief Ron Campurciani, Town Attorney Sharon Crawford and others treated the incident like “a false alarm.” When Lee refused to go along with efforts to suppress, conceal or “lose” the video and associated records, senior officials conspired to silence and isolate him and then began termination proceedings against him, according to the lawsuit.
Lee resigned “after being identified for termination and placed under escalating pressure” by town officials because he insisted the evidence of Carney’s activities in Town Hall be preserved, according to the lawsuit.
In multiple media interviews, Carney has denied that anything improper happened in Town Hall in the early morning hours of October 10, 2024. He claims that he became ill after mixing alcohol and prescription medications. After stopping by Town Hall to pick up his work phone he decided to stay until he felt better, Carney said. He has conceded that the surveillance video might show him in his underwear because he vomited on his pants.
Despite multiple public records requests, town officials have refused to release the CCTV footage. A Charlotte TV station has filed a lawsuit asking a judge to order the town to do so.
According to Lee’s lawsuit, the video is not something that could be aired on broadcast television.
“The footage shows Mayor Carney and the accompanying woman moving through Town Hall hallways and interior spaces, and it further shows Mayor Carney in a state of partial or complete undress, with his genitalia exposed,” according to the lawsuit. “The footage is inconsistent with the Mayor’s public explanation that the incident involved vomiting and instead depicts nudity and sexual arousal.”
Senior town officials, including Jerome, Campurciani, and Crawford, were made aware of the incident and the CCTV footage and took no action, Lee claims.
In the face of pressure to delete, alter, misclassify, conceal, overwrite, corrupt, “lose” or otherwise manipulate any electronic evidence, the IT director said he insisted that the surveillance footage, access logs, alarm records and associated metadata be preserved, according to the lawsuit. Lee said he also “refused to participate in any effort designed to make evidence functionally disappear while maintaining plausible deniability.”
“Plaintiff’s refusal placed him in direct conflict with senior Town leadership, whose overriding objective became controlling access to the footage, restricting knowledge of its contents, limiting who could retrieve or export it, and preventing the creation of a clear and auditable evidentiary record that could expose mishandling, concealment, or obstruction,” the lawsuit alleges.
As a result of Lee’s actions, “defendants then initiated and advanced a pretextual disciplinary and termination process … to construct a justification for removing the one employee who possessed both (a) the technical control necessary to preserve and produce evidence and (b) firsthand knowledge of the evidence’s existence and the Town’s response to it,” the lawsuit claims.
Jerome and Campurciani personally “participated in, directed, approved, and/or ratified actions that resulted in the targeting, investigations, and termination of Plaintiff,” the lawsuit contends.
Meanwhile, Carney “used his influence, directly and/or through subordinates, to affect the Town’s response to that incident and to retaliate against employees who possessed knowledge of, or control over, the related evidence,” Lee alleges.
The lawsuit also alleges that Crawford, the town attorney, was involved in the coverup.
Following the October 10, 2024, incident in Town Hall, but before he resigned, Lee said he was asked to assist the legal team with its response to a public records request related to the mayor’s late-night activities.
While reviewing the records that the town attorney was preparing to release in response to the records request, Lee said he noticed that several digital records had been removed, according to the lawsuit.
“Plaintiff raised the omission directly with Town Attorney Sharon Crawford and stated that he had seen the responsive CAD commentary deleted/removed from the records production; Crawford responded in substance that the Town would respond with what it chose to respond with,” according to the lawsuit.
Lee contends that his mistreatment was the continuation of a “broader” pattern in a hostile work environment under the leadership of Jerome and Carney. Employees “who possess knowledge of politically damaging electronic evidence” are targeted for investigation and discipline and removed, according to the lawsuit.
Lee’s claim is the third filed in federal court in recent months by a former town employee.
Jeff Noble, another former IT employee, has also filed a whistleblower retaliation complaint related to his termination, which he said was the result of his refusal to cover up evidence related to the mayor’s actions on October 10, 2024.
Former Assistant Police Chief Frank Falzone has also filed a lawsuit, claiming he was forced into retirement after he asked questions about the town’s handling of the mayor’s embarrassing incident in Town Hall and another incident in which Carney was stopped on Highway 150. Chief Campurciani has insisted that Carney, who was returning home from a political event for District Attorney Sarah Kirkman, was not impaired and broke no laws.
“Across these matters, the Town’s playbook is consistent: when evidence threatens powerful officials, the Town does not investigate the officials; it investigates the employees who know where the evidence is, who insist on preserving it, and who refuse to participate in burying it,” Lee claims in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also claims that requests for an independent investigation by the State Bureau of Investigation, made by the Iredell County Sheriff’s Office and the N.C. Police Benevolence Association have not been acted on by the District Attorney’s Office.
In the federal lawsuit, Lee is seeking the award of financial damages for loss of employment, lost income and benefits, emotional distress and reputational harm.
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