Sheriff’s deputies, firefighters and EMS crews responded to a Rocala Drive call that became one of Buncombe County’s gravest cases this spring.
BARNARDSVILLE, N.C. — Deputies, firefighters and paramedics rushed to a home on Rocala Drive on Thursday afternoon after a reported stabbing, only to find a 10-month-old boy gravely wounded and in need of emergency transport to an Asheville hospital.
By the end of the day, the rescue call had become a murder case. Authorities say the child, Enoch Chappell, died after being taken to Mission Hospital and that his mother, 34-year-old Ciara Breann Frederick, was arrested. The case has drawn immediate attention not only because of the age of the victim, but because local responders from a small mountain community were pulled into a scene that prosecutors now say involved both a child killing and an alleged knife chase involving a second person.
The first public details came through the response itself. Officials said Buncombe County sheriff’s deputies, the Barnardsville Fire Department and Buncombe County EMS were sent to the property just after 2 p.m. Thursday, March 26. The call was first described as an assault investigation. When crews arrived, they found the baby with multiple stab wounds and worked to get him to Mission Hospital. Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin Miller later said those responders “did everything they could to save this child’s life,” a statement that placed the failed medical effort at the center of the county’s first public reaction. In a rural area where response times, terrain and distance can shape the outcome of emergencies, the account of that rush to the hospital became one of the earliest fixed points in the case.
From there, the public record widened but only slightly. Authorities said Frederick was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Court records later cited by local media added two counts of assault with a deadly weapon. Those counts stem from an allegation that Frederick chased a man down the driveway with a fixed-blade knife. Officials have not publicly named the man, said whether he was injured, or explained whether he was at the home before the attack on the child, during it or after it. They also have not released a fuller narrative of what deputies found when they reached the scene. That leaves the known facts unusually concentrated around the response window: the call, the arrival, the child’s wounds, the hospital transport and the arrest that followed.
Barnardsville’s setting gives the case a different texture than one unfolding in a dense city block. The community lies north of Asheville in Buncombe County’s mountain terrain, where homes can sit apart from one another and emergency scenes often involve a smaller mix of county deputies and local fire crews who know the area well. That does not change the criminal allegations, but it does shape the way the event is experienced publicly. A case like this can move through a place as a wave of shock carried by responders, courthouse staff and nearby families long before many records are released. So far, there has been no broad public explanation from investigators beyond the charges and short statements, and no extended account from relatives in public view.
The legal case then moved quickly into court. Frederick made her first appearance Friday, March 27, and a judge told her the first-degree murder charge could expose her to the death penalty or life without parole. She was held without bond and received court-appointed counsel, with the capital defender process beginning because of the seriousness of the charge. Prosecutors later won an order sealing the 911 calls and related reports, limiting what the public could hear or read from the earliest moments of the incident. Her next scheduled appearance was set for April 16 for a probable cause hearing, where investigators and prosecutors were expected to begin laying out evidence in open court.
Even with the formal process underway, the scene’s emotional residue stayed close to the surface. Sheriff Miller’s statement was brief but personal in tone, saying the county’s “hearts are broken.” Local coverage of the first appearance said Frederick’s family members sat in court and wept. Between those two points lies the shape of the story as the public now knows it: a fast emergency response on a mountain road, a child who could not be saved, a mother jailed on a murder charge and a community waiting for a fuller explanation that has not yet been made public.
The case stands at that difficult midpoint common in major criminal investigations: the immediate emergency is over, the defendant is in custody, and the next turn depends on what evidence prosecutors choose to reveal in court.
Author note: Last updated April 18, 2026.