Character Killer

I killed off one of my characters. Annihilated, obliterated, whipped out of existence, and all it took was the tip of my mechanical pencil crossing out his description, any action he's done, and replacing his name with another at the end of a piece of dialogue.

Reading so much about and on writing in the last year is what made me do it. Something among the books, articles, blog posts, etc. told me he had to go. I liked Charles, the character I destroyed, but he just didn't do anything for the story. I think he was supposed to have in the beginning, but since I wrote the story two years ago, I can't remember what his original purpose was.

Even still, he faded away. He never talked much to begin with, but he faded into the background, and soon I just wrote him off. Literally, I made him move away. So it seemed like he was wasted space in the story, and when the editing pencil came out, I knew he had to disappear.

How many characters have simply vanished this way? Am I a character-killer running solo, or am I part of an army of writers who sneak up on unsuspecting sub-characters and strike lines through the names, replacing them or eliminating them completely?

What do you do with the characters who go nowhere or do nothing? Do you leave them be, get rid of them? And if you do get rid of them, do you send them to some sort of Character waiting room where they patiently sit, hoping that you gave them enough background that they have a chance of coming back in another story where they take a more center stage?

I'd like to know what you do with the characters that don't make an impact.