The 27-year-old athlete and entrepreneur left plans for education, business and community service that relatives are now pursuing in her name.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The criminal case over Brianye Copeland’s death ended with a guilty plea and a 25-to-31-year prison sentence, but her family’s work since the killing has centered on something the court could not restore: the future the 27-year-old had been building.
Kristopher Anthony Sinclair, 40, pleaded guilty Sept. 8 to second-degree murder in Copeland’s Feb. 7, 2025, shooting death outside the Ella B. Scarborough Community Resource Center in Charlotte. The sentence brought a legal resolution more than 18 months after police arrested Sinclair on the day of the killing. Copeland’s relatives attended the sentencing in large numbers, submitting 52 victim-impact statements, according to WSOC-TV. Yet their public response to her death has extended beyond the prosecution. They have established the BriWay Foundation, continued talking about the goals she left unfinished and asked that she be remembered as an athlete, student, entrepreneur, mentor and daughter rather than only as the victim in a homicide file.
Long before her name appeared in Charlotte police records, Copeland was known in Evansville, Indiana, for basketball. She attended Harrison High School and graduated in 2015 after a career that placed her among the program’s leading players. Her obituary says she scored 1,179 points, finished fifth on the school’s career scoring list and held the school record for assists when she graduated. Basketball was only part of her athletic life. She also competed in soccer and track, briefly held a 100-meter record and competed at the state level in track as a freshman. An Indiana Basketball Coaches Association record listed her among the state’s honorable-mention players during her high school years.
College kept sports at the center of her life. Copeland attended Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, where she majored in biology and played guard on the women’s basketball team. She also earned a walk-on place in track and field. After moving to Charlotte with her parents and sister, she continued training and competed in the Queen City Pro-Am league. Her family’s accounts of those years repeatedly connect sports to relationships: time working with her father, one-on-one games with her sister and the large group of relatives and friends who came to watch. After her death, her father, Brian Copeland, recalled the memories tied to basketball even as the family began deciding how to continue projects she had hoped to pursue.
Education and business were increasingly important parts of those plans. Copeland’s obituary says she earned an associate degree after moving to North Carolina and later enrolled at UNC Charlotte to complete a bachelor’s degree. She had taken a real estate class and was pursuing a real estate license. She also held North Carolina life and health insurance certification. At the same time, she was developing several entrepreneurial ventures. They included BC Luxury Candle Co., Wealthy Lifestyle and planned clothing lines. She was also working on a playbook titled “Hustle and Growth.” The mix of school, professional credentials and business projects reflected the ambitious image her relatives described after her death.
Her family also emphasized work that did not fit neatly on a résumé. Copeland volunteered, mentored younger relatives and served as a spiritual captain while participating in Athletes in Action at Central State, according to her obituary. Her younger sister, A’Bria Copeland, told 14 News that Brianye had been the person she confided in and described her as a protector. Their parents said helping people was central to what their daughter wanted to do. In the weeks after the killing, the family began discussing scholarships, programs and community support as ways to extend those goals. The BriWay Foundation grew out of that effort, with the family describing its mission as supporting young people and raising awareness about violence affecting women.
The legal case that ultimately produced Sinclair’s sentence began on a Friday morning outside a public resource center. Charlotte-Mecklenburg police said officers were called shortly before 10 a.m. to the 400 block of Stitt Road for an assault with a deadly weapon with injury. They found Copeland in the parking lot with a gunshot wound. She was pronounced dead there. The center closed temporarily as detectives and crime-scene personnel worked. Police announced the following day that Copeland had been identified and that Sinclair, then 38, had been arrested. He was interviewed at the Law Enforcement Center before being transferred to the county jail and charged with murder.
The investigation revealed a relationship that prosecutors said had grown increasingly troubling. Sinclair and Copeland had met while on vacation and stayed in contact even though he lived in Mableton, Georgia, and she lived in the Charlotte area. Law&Crime reported that the two exchanged about 15,000 text messages during a period of nearly a year. Prosecutors said Sinclair became obsessed with Copeland and put a tracking device on her vehicle in the days before the shooting. That surveillance became a central fact in later accounts of the case because it showed that the fatal confrontation was preceded by monitoring of her movements rather than being treated as an unexplained encounter in a parking lot.
Witnesses at the resource center gave police information about the final confrontation. According to reporting based on a probable-cause affidavit, employees saw Sinclair and Copeland arguing and sought security assistance when the encounter became physical. Witnesses described Sinclair standing over Copeland and hitting her before the shooting. Authorities said he left afterward. Police followed information from the scene to a nearby apartment complex, where witnesses reported seeing him enter a wooded area. He was arrested after returning toward his vehicle. A police K-9 later helped locate a backpack containing Sinclair’s driver license and a handwritten note. Investigators also recovered the gun linked to the killing from his vehicle, according to published reports.
For Copeland’s relatives, those investigative details were followed by a different kind of gathering in Evansville. Family and friends assembled at Memorial Baptist Church in February 2025 to remember her life. Matthews, Copeland’s mother, said at the time that the family wanted the service to include laughter and stories along with grief because those memories showed the person Copeland had been. Donations were directed toward a memorial fund intended to support scholarships and community initiatives. Less than two weeks after the killing, the family was already discussing ways to turn those donations and future programs into a continuation of her work.
The same emphasis was visible when Sinclair was sentenced in September 2026. Relatives and friends gathered outside the Mecklenburg County Courthouse wearing purple. Some had driven 10 or 11 hours, while others flew to Charlotte, Brian Copeland told WSOC-TV. Matthews said the number of people present was meant to show the impact Sinclair’s actions had on the family. She also said she believed the sentence was too short because Sinclair retains the possibility of eventually leaving prison. That response drew a distinction between a legal endpoint and a family’s understanding of permanence: the state could set a term of years, but Copeland’s death had no expiration date.
Sinclair’s guilty plea spared the family a murder trial but fixed the punishment at decades rather than a life defined solely by the original charge. Local reporting citing court records said he received credit for 578 days already served. The court also found aggravating factors involving risk to others, a position of trust in a domestic relationship and the presence of a person younger than 18 who was in a position to see the crime. Those findings form part of the official account of the killing. They do not capture the part of the story that Copeland’s relatives have spent more than a year building outside the courthouse.
The BriWay Foundation is now one of the clearest expressions of that work. It gives Copeland’s parents a structure for pursuing scholarships and assistance similar to the ambitions they said she held herself. It also preserves a public identity that is not limited to how she died. Copeland’s obituary described family vacations, restaurants, painting, candle-making, graphic design, web design and long conversations with her parents alongside sports and business. Her family has continued to place those details beside the criminal record, insisting through its work that a homicide victim’s life can be documented with the same care as the evidence in the case.
What comes next for Copeland’s family is centered outside the criminal courts. Through the BriWay Foundation, her parents and supporters are pursuing scholarships, assistance for young people and awareness work tied to causes they say reflected her values. Sinclair’s prison term answers the legal question of punishment, but the family’s longer project is different: carrying forward plans that Copeland, an athlete, student and entrepreneur, did not have the chance to complete herself.
Author note: Last updated Oct. 20, 2026.