Doug Maxwell, whose distinctive voice resonated with radio listeners as he updated Charlotte traffic from a single-engine Cessna plane, was found dead of “blunt force trauma” in a car outside his Davie County home Wednesday morning, the sheriff’s office said.
Deputies arrested 29-year-old Isidro Rivera Aguero Jr., who lived in the same home in Advance as the 62-year-old Maxwell, and charged him with murder, according to a sheriff’s office statement.
Aguero was in the Davie County Detention Center under a $2 million bond Saturday.
Investigators aren’t saying if they know what prompted the killing.
Deputies found Maxwell dead about 8:15 a.m. after responding to a call from 888 Underpass Road “in reference to unknown medical call,” according to the sheriff’s office statement.
Maxwell was a divorced father of five who formerly lived in Cornelius, Charlotte lawyer and longtime friend Bob Bollinger told The Charlotte Observer on Friday.
Bollinger said Maxwell had health issues in recent years, and Bollinger thought illness might have caused his death when a mutual friend notified him that Maxwell had died.
“I was shocked that he had been murdered,” Bollinger said.
The pair had been friends since their days as frat brothers in the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 1980-81, Bollinger said.
“Always outgoing,” friend said
Maxwell was an “on-air talent” with Charlotte news talk station 1110 WBT AM and Charlotte adult hot hits station 107.9 FM for six and a half years, from October 2010 to February 2017, according to his Linkedin profile. Bollinger said that talent was as a traffic reporter with a voice like a TV station anchor.
For the past seven and a half years, he was an executive account manager with Valuebiz Office Furniture in Charlotte.
“He was outgoing, extroverted,” Bollinger said. “Always easy to talk to. Friendly. Always friendly.”
Which makes his death so hard to understand, Bollinger said.
This is a developing story that will be updated.
