Mother and Teacher Murder Case Linked to Suspect’s Stalking Victim

A man, whose mother and teacher were killed after calling 911, has been accused of stalking another family for over a year, forcing them to relocate twice.

Ryan Camacho, 36, faces felony murder and robbery charges in the death of esteemed science teacher Zoe Welsh at her home in Raleigh, North Carolina, early Saturday morning.

Tribal Chairman Wes Phillips stated that Camacho subjected another family to relentless harassment, leading to significant distress and urging them to move due to property damage and disturbances caused by him.

In an unsettling memory, Phillips recalled an incident during Hurricane Matthew in October 2016 when he spotted Camacho outside their new Raleigh home, seemingly waiting and watching silently in a black jacket. “It felt like something out of a horror movie,” he said.

After Phillips called the police, he recorded Camacho attempting to force open the car door, despite it being locked.

Days later, Phillips’s wife spotted Camacho picking up a large rock, and security footage captured him throwing it at their car’s windshield and assaulting the vehicle from above.

In 2018, Camacho reportedly visited Phillips’s old residence and fired a gun at the building, mistakenly believing they lived there at the time. Although no one was harmed, Camacho received multiple charges for this incident and served two years in prison.

Phillips believes this punishment was insufficient. Camacho had called the police several times and sought a no-contact order against him but faced no consequences for the harassment directed at the Phillips family.

“We clearly communicated our fears, yet our concerns didn’t seem to be taken seriously,” Phillips expressed, emphasizing his frustration with the system.

He also conveyed his anger at what he perceives as an institutional failure that potentially led to Welsh’s tragic murder: “Reflecting on the past week, my wife and I have wondered how close we might have come to being victims too.”

Prosecutors noted that despite having spent most of the past six years in prison, a judge rejected the involuntary act charge against Camacho.

“He has essentially spent nearly all of the past six years in and out of facilities, except for about a year,” Wake County District Attorney Lorin Freeman shared.

Freeman added that the judge made decisions based on evidence at the time, without the foresight to predict future events. There has been no immediate response from Judge Meyer or the Wake County Attorney’s Office regarding further comments.