NC: Federal charges added against suspect in second Charlotte light rail stabbing

The Honduran man accused in Charlotte’s latest light rail attack faces a rare federal charge that could send him to prison for the rest of his life.

Federal prosecutors on Thursday filed a complaint accusing 33-year-old Oscar Gerado Solorzano-Garcia of illegally reentering the country after being deported and committing a “terrorist attack or other violence against a mass transportation system.”

He had already been banned from Charlotte’s public transit system when he was arrested on Dec. 5 and charged with stabbing another passenger in the chest with a 12-inch knife while drinking a wine cooler on the LYNX Blue Line.

Solorzano-Garcia is the second person to face the terrorism charge in Charlotte in the last four months.

Until this year, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina had never before filed the charge, which stems from a law passed after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a spokesperson said. U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson first applied it in charging DeCarlos Brown Jr. in the August light rail stabbing and death of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska.

If found guilty, Brown could face the death penalty in his case. The person Solorzano-Garcia allegedly stabbed survived, so the death penalty cannot be applied, federal law says. Still, he could face life in prison.

The immigration charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years. U.S. Attorney discusses light rail safety

Prosecutors say Solorzano-Garcia drank an alcoholic beverage and then yelled at a passenger before the attack. Kenyon Dobie told him to stop yelling, and Solorzano-Garcia started yelling at him and challenging him to a fight, county court documents say. Dobie pushed him away, and Solorzano-Garcia stabbed him just before 5 p.m., according to reports.

Dobie “stood up and ended up stabbed,” Ferguson said. “But if security had been on the train, they could have kicked him off before it rose to that level.”

Dobie’s lung was punctured, but he survived the attack, the criminal complaint says. Dobie was arrested in an unrelated October assault case Wednesday, jail records show. Federal immigration charge in light rail stabbing

The FBI said Solorzano-Garcia goes by multiple names, including Oscar Solorazano, Kevin Garcia and Oscar Gerardo Garcia. Some law enforcement documents also have spelled his name Solarzano and Solozano. He is a Honduran citizen and has been deported twice before, according to a criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.

He was in the country illegally at the time of the stabbing and, according to the complaint, had a criminal background, including: * a 2012 robbery charge and later conviction in New Jersey. * a 2016 battery with a deadly weapon charge in Florida. He stabbed a victim multiple times with a “large knife,” police reports say. It is unclear if he was convicted. * a March 2018 deportation. * a December 2019 illegal reentry charge, for which he served 18 months in prison. * a 2021 deportation.

“Oscar Solorzano-Garcia should not have been on the Charlotte light rail. ... In fact, he should have been in our country,” FBI Special Agent in Charge James C. Barnacle Jr. said in a news release.

Asked why the Department of Homeland Security did not apprehend Solorzano-Garcia during its weeklong operation in Charlotte last month, Ferguson said: “there’s not a list of illegal immigrants we can go down to arrest them all, or we would do it.”

Customs and Border Protection agents stopped people in public places seemingly randomly during operation “Charlotte’s Web,” the Observer previously reported. It faced widespread backlash from local and state leaders who said the operation appeared to be racially profiling Latino Charlotteans.

The “operation sometimes seemed a little hectic at times,” Ferguson said, “because it is a very difficult crime to detect. They didn’t get Mr. Solorzano-Garcia, but I certainly wish that they had.”

Ferguson said he brought the federal charge against Brown and now Solorzano-Garcia because he wants people to not only be safe but feel safe on Charlotte’s transit system.

Last year, his family’s Christmas card photo was taken on the light rail, Ferguson said. They loaded up a Christmas tree from Lowe’s onto the Blue Line.

This year, he heaved the pine onto a pickup truck in the parking lot.

“I don’t know if the light rail is safe,” he said. “I don’t think the light rail feels safe at this moment.”

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