Charlotte prioritizes $3.4M transit marketing blitz over safety after recent stabbings, GOP chair says

The metropolis of Charlotte is nether occurrence for approving a $3.4 cardinal selling run for the Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS), pursuing caller stabbings connected the light-rail system.

The Charlotte City Council voted this period to prosecute a Texas-based steadfast to enactment a multiyear communications and branding effort for CATS. City officials person said the declaration was unrelated to the caller stabbings connected the light-rail strategy and that the timing was coincidental, but not connected to the incidents.

Mecklenburg County GOP Chairperson Kyle Kirby rejected that explanation, telling Fox News Digital that the multimillion-dollar nationalist relations blitz is simply a "cover-up" arsenic the metropolis grapples with nationalist information issues.

"It's beauteous outrageous that the metropolis would beryllium allocating $3.4 cardinal for a PR run fundamentally to screen up the deficiency of information and information connected the airy obstruction strategy alternatively than really putting that wealth to bully usage wherever we could person enclosed platforms, we could person a constabulary serviceman connected each obstruction car," helium said.

Split of Charlotte, North Carolina bid stabbing unfortunate Kenyon Dobie and amerciable migrant fishy Oscar Gerardo Solorzano-Garcia. The Justice Department said helium had been deported doubly from the United States and has a transgression past successful the U.S. (GoFundMe; Mecklenburg County Jail)

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Two stabbings successful little than 4 months

The selling declaration comes arsenic CATS has faced caller stabbing attacks connected committee Blue Line trains.

Aug. 22:

Iryna Zarutska, 23, was commuting location connected nationalist proscription erstwhile she was stabbed to death, allegedly by Decarlos Brown Jr., 34.

The onslaught was captured connected CATS' surveillance footage and showed the young commuter cowering arsenic her alleged slayer towered down her.

WATCH: Video shows moments earlier pistillate stabbed to decease connected Charlotte light-rail

Dec. 5:

According to police, connected Dec. 5, Oscar Gerardo Solorzano-Garcia, 33, stabbed Kenyon Kareem-Shemar Dobie connected the light-rail strategy during an argument. Prior to the attack, helium broke into a railroad car "with the intent to perpetrate a felony" portion carrying a ample fixed-blade knife, authorities said.

While intoxicated, helium challenged Dobie to a fight, cursing and shouting astatine others and utilizing "unintelligible and slurred words," according to tribunal documents.

He was arrested by responding Charlotte-Mecklenburg constabulary officers arsenic helium walked distant from the scene. Dobie was taken to a infirmary with a stab coiled to the precocious near thorax and survived, constabulary said.

Solorzano-Garcia is charged with 1 number of amerciable reentry by a removed alien and 1 number of committing an enactment of unit connected a wide proscription system.

A presumption of the memorial dedicated to slain 23-year-old Ukrainian Iryna Zarutska astatine the East/West Blvd light-rail presumption successful Charlotte connected Sept. 11, 2025. (Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images)

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Kirby pointed to these past incidents arsenic grounds of the metropolis prioritizing optics alternatively than nationalist safety.

"$3.4 cardinal could person been spent amended going to the Sheriff's Department to enforce Iryna's Law to assistance support convulsive criminals down bars," helium said. "But instead, the metropolis assembly decides that their apical precedence is to allocate that wealth for a wholly unneeded acceptable of circumstances, similar putting that toward a nationalist relations campaign."

Kirby said that pursuing the stabbings, the nationalist proscription has been "very empty."

"If you were to get connected the airy obstruction contiguous and thrust it from the bottommost of the tracks each the mode up to UNC Charlotte, you would spot a precise bare obstruction car due to the fact that radical are afraid," helium said.

Sheriff Garry McFadden discussed Iryna's Law connected Monday, Dec. 8. (Mecklenburg's County Sheriff's Office/Facebook)

Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden has argued that the community's fearfulness is, successful part, owed to the media shaping nationalist perception.

"And we judge that the lone crushed that this caught nationalist attraction is due to the fact that it was caught connected video and it was displayed crossed the United States, and our section politicians astatine that clip saw it was a governmental agenda, oregon they could item her arsenic a exile and not an immigrant," McFadden said. "This is wherefore they created Iryna's Law."

Kirby has said that some stabbings were preventable if proactive policing was implemented.

"Perception successful this lawsuit is perfectly reality," helium said.

"The Sheriff's Department, conscionable a period earlier this, refused to assistance Border Patrol with their migration enforcement successful Charlotte," helium said of the Dec. 5 case.

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He added that Zarutska's sidesplitting could person been prevented "had Mecklenburg magistrates and judges taken convulsive transgression offenders earnestly and not released them connected their ain recognizance."

Fox News Digital has reached retired to the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office and CATS for comment.