Town video of reportedly pantless NC mayor must be released, judge rules

Joe Marusak, The Charlotte Observer on Apr 16, 2026

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Town Hall video depicting what a lawsuit says was a pantless Mooresville Mayor Chris Carney with a woman is public record and must be released, a judge has ruled.

The overnight surveillance videos from October 10, 2024, are neither criminal investigative materials nor sensitive public security information, as the town contended they were, according to Wednesday’s ruling by Iredell Superior Court Judge Richard Gottlieb.

As “the videos were not compiled by a law enforcement agency for a criminal investigation, they cannot be kept confidential,” per state law, the judge ruled.

The ruling came in the ongoing civil lawsuit filed by WBTV against the town.

Gottlieb ordered the town to, within five business days, “provide WBTV all CCTV footage captured on Town Hall cameras that depicts the Mayor, his companion, and responding officers in the morning hours of October 10, 2024.”

Or the town can “submit the videos for in camera review and identify which portions of the videos it seeks to redact and the statutory basis for the redactions,” Gottlieb ruled.

Alarms were twice triggered in the building, requiring police response each time, Carney has acknowledged in an interview with The Charlotte Observer.

He didn’t have pants on “for an extended period,” according to the WBTV complaint in court.

Carney has said in media interviews that he fell ill after medications he was on mixed with alcohol after a gathering at a bar near Town Hall.

The woman who accompanied him to Town Hall is a longtime family friend who sent a photo of Carney ill at Town Hall to his wife that night, so she’d know the condition he was in, he told the Observer.

He went there to retrieve his phone when he got sick, he said. “I never thought, to be fair, that vomiting and making a mess would become a national story,” the mayor said. “I really couldn’t have imagined that.

“And I would tell the public, I am so sorry,” he said. “I truly didn’t think anything other than I needed my phone and then, when I felt bad, this is a safe space ... a place where, when I felt better, I would go home.”

Regarding the pantless claim, he said, he was cleaning vomit off himself, “by myself. The other person was multiple offices away, behind two sets of doors, he said.

“When do I get to have my own dignity?” Carney asked. “Anybody who’s reviewed that film, there’s nothing inappropriate.”

Carney refused to resign this month when the Mooresville Board of Commissioners voted 4-2 in favor of a resolution expressing “no confidence” in him.

“This again is the unfortunate side of politics,” Carney said. “58,000 people elected me in November. I’ve gotten hundreds of texts” with support.

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