Mooresville mayor refutes lawsuit claims about late-night encounters

MOORESVILLE

Mooresville Mayor Chris Carney and the town’s police chief refuted claims Wednesday in two federal lawsuits about Carney’s behavior during two late-night encounters with police.

“Enough is enough,” Carney said in an interview with The Charlotte Observer and Observer news partner WSOC. “We need to come out and set the record straight.”

Carney said claims are false in the lawsuits filed against him, the town and other Mooresville officials by a former IT worker and ex-assistant police chief Frank Falzone.

“It’s been awful, to be honest with you,” Carney said. “When you come into office trying to do the right thing” only to face “unfounded accusations.”

“I just can’t sit back” and not contest the bogus claims in the lawsuits, Carney said. “My family deserves better than this, Mooresville deserves better than this.”

Lawsuit claims

Falzone filed a whistleblower lawsuit on Monday alleging he was forced to retire for raising concerns about the late-night incidents involving Carney.

The lawsuit said Falzone was threatened with the loss of his pension if he didn’t retire, “depriving him of his career, reputation, and livelihood.”

The 37-page lawsuit stems “from a deliberate and coordinated campaign by senior officials of the Town of Mooresville to silence, discredit and remove” Falzone for refusing “to participate in or remain silent about serious governmental misconduct,” according to the complaint.

The allegations of misconduct involved Carney and Police Chief Ron Campurciani and “efforts of senior Town leadership to conceal that misconduct,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit cites a late-night traffic stop involving the mayor and the police chief on Jan. 30, 2024, and Carney being in town hall with a woman one overnight in October 2024.

The October 2024 incident prompted a lawsuit in January by Jeffrey Noble, a former IT employee who said he was fired in retaliation for reporting misconduct by the mayor that overnight, including video showing Carney pantless.

In each incident, according to the complaint, Falzone “identified electronic evidence … that should have existed and been preserved, or properly classified, but which was instead missing, misclassified, incomplete, or rendered inaccessible under the supervision of senior officials.”

Evidence included records, body-worn camera metadata and audit data, access-control logs, alarm data and surveillance footage, the lawsuit states.

“Rather than investigate the Mayor’s conduct or address the serious irregularities Falzone identified, many of which directly implicated the Police Chief’s supervisory and administrative responsibilities, Defendants turned the machinery of government inward.”

Mayor addresses claims

In Wednesday’s interview, Carney said separate investigations into the incidents found no truth to the claims, including by U.S. ISS, an outside, independent investigative agency, into the Jan. 30 incident.

Earlier Wednesday, the Mooresville Board of Commissioners voted unanimously to release the findings of the separate reports through the town’s legal department. The reports were not yet released by 5 p.m.

Commissioners said they voted to release the reports to be fully transparent.

“I’ve sat here a long time,” commissioner Eddie Dingler said. “I don’t hide anything.”

“Our brand has taken a hit, and we should release what we can,” commissioner Gary West agreed.

Carney asked the board to approve releasing the reports.

“This is solely so we can tell the great citizens we were not going to hide behind laws,” he said. “We’re going to give you everything we have. The people expect that. We could not have done this more transparently.”

Falzone retired on his own, police chief says

Carney and Campurciani later addressed various claims in the lawsuits, telling the Observer and WSOC the allegations were simply untrue.

Campurciani said Falzone retired on his own after he was placed on administrative leave, as is standard practice, after preliminary results of an outside investigation into his conduct toward the owner of a local boat repair company. Falzone hired the company to do extensive repairs on his personal boat, according to a letter the owner wrote about the incident.

The findings “were troubling,” Campurciani said, but the full investigation was still being conducted by the outside agency, not his department when Falzone retired.

The owner called 911 to request police response after he said Falzone grew angry at him at Stumpy Creek Access Area on Lake Norman. Carney provided the Observer a copy of the letter the owner wrote about the incident. In the letter, the owner called Falzone’s angry behavior “unethical and outrageous,” including “jumping on and kicking my hitch” to remove his boat trailer from his truck.

Late-night traffic stop claims

Carney and Campurciani said Falzone’s lawsuit contains false claims about what happened during the Jan. 30, 2024, traffic stop. It wasn’t even a traffic stop, they said.

The mayor said he was driving from a fundraiser for Iredell County District Attorney Sarah Kirkman when he saw Campurciani driving from the event, too, and the two pulled over to chat for a few minutes.

Carney said he hosted the event and gave speeches throughout the time. Multiple people at the event would confirm he wasn’t drinking, unlike the lawsuit claim, he said.

The lawsuit cited a police captain saying the mayor appeared impaired at the scene. Carney and Campurciani said the captain happened to drive by as they chatted. The captain never left his car but continued on when he realized no stop was needed.

So there was no police body-camera footage of the scene, contrary to the lawsuit claim that footage was tampered with, Carney said. “The facts just don’t support it,” he said.

Mayor addresses pantless claim

The mayor said allegations in the IT worker’s lawsuit about his conduct in town hall in October 2024 are likewise false, including that he was walking around pantless.

Carney has repeatedly 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 said. He’d gone 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 Wednesday. “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.

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

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

This story was originally published February 11, 2026 at 5:23 PM.