NC: Where do most violent crimes occur on CATS transit? The answer may surprise you.

Charlotte’s public transit system has been under fire since Iryna Zarutska was stabbed to death last August on a light rail train. Outrage intensified when a second rail passenger was stabbed in December.

President Donald Trump and other Republican politicians have characterized Charlotte as a criminal hotspot. But reality doesn’t match the rhetoric, Charlotte Observer analyses of crime data show.

Crime is rare on public transit, for one. Less than 1% of violent crimes that happen within a quarter of a mile of CATS bus or light rail routes or stops actually involve transit.

And while much of the public outcry has focused on risks aboard light rail, serious assaults are much more likely to occur on buses than on trains when you consider the number of passenger trips on each, according to our analyses.

From 2020 through October 2025, people aboard Charlotte buses were seriously assaulted at least 31 times. Over the same period, CATS reported 10 assaults, or less than four per every 10 million passenger trips, on the light rail, data CATS submitted to the federal government shows.

These statistics ranked Charlotte’s serious assault rate on buses second only to Minneapolis. The violent assault rate on the Blue Line didn’t rank nearly that high when compared to other rail systems: CATS rail came in eleventh.

People who have been assaulted on buses told the Observer they wonder whether the community cares enough about bus riders.

“When I was assaulted, I had that question. Do people not know about this?” said Laurie Cole, who commuted by bus to Uptown for work before she was attacked onboard in 2023. “And would people actually be outraged to know that someone was assaulted on a commuter bus going home from work and then the person who committed the crime didn’t spend a day in jail for it?”

Bus passengers attacked

Digging into what CATS submits to the federal government and police reports, the Observer found a variety of serious attacks aboard buses before Zarutska’s death that never made the news or seem to have ignited any publicized city response.

On a Thursday afternoon in June 2024, a city bus was rolling along Freedom Drive in West Charlotte when a man wearing a ninja-style mask on board approached a young woman near the back.

He then stabbed her repeatedly on the right side of her neck. She tried to fight back, briefly. But he grabbed her purse and escaped as the bus stopped, according to Federal Transit Administration records.

Medics took the woman to the hospital to be treated for serious injuries on her neck and hands. The Observer reached her brother to confirm the assault, but we are not publishing her name because she did not agree to talk about what she endured.

Five months later, Edward Gallman boarded a city bus on Eastway Drive in East Charlotte at night. As the bus headed down the Plaza, a woman a few seats ahead of him got up and lunged at him.

She sliced the base of his thumb with a box cutter.

“I looked and my blood was going down the aisle,” Gallman told the Observer.

He spent the entire night in the emergency room. While he nursed his wound, Laurie Cole on the opposite end of the metro area was learning to live with hers.

Attacked on her commute

Cole had regularly taken the commuter bus from Belmont to her bank office in Uptown because it was more convenient than sitting in traffic in her own vehicle.

But that changed after a July afternoon in 2023. While she and other regular commuters waited to board the 85X at the corner of Trade and Tryon streets, they saw a woman throw a man to the ground across the road. The man got up and walked to the side of the street where Cole stood, only for his attacker to chase him, grab him by the collar and throw him to the ground again.

After the man’s head hit the pavement, Cole called 911. She explained to the operator what she witnessed, an officer arrived and Cole boarded her bus.

The woman, who Cole thinks heard the call, followed her. And then sat by her. Cole got up and moved. The woman followed her.

Cole switched seats four times, she said. The last time, Cole started to dial 911 again. The woman kicked Cole, pulled her backpack off and started hitting her in the face.

“The next thing I remember I am a few seats back and I could hear someone screaming and I realized that it was me,” Cole said. “I had my hand over my head and she was yanking the hair out of my head.”

After extensive physical therapy, Cole’s broken pinky finger still gives her trouble to this day.

Spotlight on light rail

When Federal Transit Administrator Marcus Molinaro visited Charlotte last month to assess how CATS is responding to safety concerns, he rode the light rail. Not any buses, said city council member Ed Driggs, who accompanied him on the tour.

Driggs said the high-profile, “lurid, hideous” nature of Zarutska’s death focused the public’s attention on light rail. The result is that there hasn’t been a “down-to-earth” discussion based on data about the reality of crime risks on transit.

“That led to what I consider to be an exaggerated perception of danger on the trains,” Driggs said.

CATS has beefed up security since Zarutska was killed, enlisting off-duty police officers in uniform to move throughout the transit system in addition to CATS security staff.

CATS was already shifting its protocol to have security staff be more mobile rather than stationed in one spot prior to Zarutska’s death, said CATS spokesperson Catherine Kummer.

Officers don’t ride buses like they’re riding the light rail. Logistically that wouldn’t be practical: buses are running 20 hours a day on 65 routes. If an officer is on one bus and a different bus needs help, the officer wouldn’t be able to respond, said Brent Cagle, CATS’ interim chief executive officer.

Trouble on a few routes is driving the higher-than-normal assault rates CATS is seeing, Cagle said, so officers focus on those areas.

“When you think about what I’m going to call quote-unquote hot spots in the transit system, they absolutely coincide with the community surrounding the system,” Cagle said. “That all makes sense because the system doesn’t stand alone … Transit reflects other general trends in the community.”

The Observer asked the CMPD for an interview with someone informed about how it staffs buses compared to light rail. A spokesperson sent an email saying the patrol divisions “impacted by the Blue Line” participate in a “coordinated operational model designed to address crime, disorder and the perception of safety along the light rail system.”

Alvy Hughes, bus division vice president of the union that represents local drivers, said officers sometimes ride behind Route 11, which travels along Tryon Street between Uptown and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and Route 21, which runs parallel to I-77 almost to I-485. Those are the routes Cagle said officers focus on.

But, Hughes added: “The emphasis has not been put on the bus system as much as it has, I feel like, on the rail.”

Security for the entire system is evolving, however.

The new Metropolitan Public Transportation Authority established from the Mecklenburg County transit tax, which voters approved in November, is considering a law enforcement agency specifically for CATS.

Cagle told the Observer that the system is eyeing new ways to use its existing video surveillance to try to prevent violent crimes and is working on getting more drivers trained on de-escalation, something a recent federal audit has said CATS is not doing fast enough.

“And I agree with that,” Cagle said.

Frustrations with responses to attacks

No matter any current or coming security efforts, Gallman and Cole say they won’t ride CATS buses anymore. Both felt their assaults were taken too lightly, they told the Observer.

“They tried to kick it up under the rug,” Gallman said.

He filed a settlement claim with the city’s risk management department after his injury and nothing came of it, he said. The Observer asked the city Feb. 4 for confirmation that Gallman’s claim was received and, if so, the claim’s status. But the city hasn’t yet provided an answer.

Cole said she remains haunted not only by the assault, but by the way the police treated her and a lack of justice in the end.

After another passenger pulled her attacker from her that day in 2023, and after the police arrived, she stood outside the bus with a cut over her eyebrow, sobbing. She saw her attacker wander off across the street in a bright turquoise shirt.

Cole heard a police officer tell a CATS supervisor she was in a fight.

She immediately corrected him. No, it was not a fight, she told them. It was an assault.

Then she pointed to the woman in the turquoise shirt. By her, she told them.

“They were not interested in knowing anything about what happened,” she said. “At one point I turned around and the three officers were laughing.”

A day later, Cole called the police for a copy of the report. Officers had categorized it as an “affray” — police speak for a fight. So she filed a formal allegation of police misconduct, which the Observer reviewed.

CMPD did not respond when asked about how officers handled Cole’s case.

Cole’s experience should not have happened, Cagle said, adding that riders should report to CATS when they are not treated appropriately. If transit staff are made aware of policing issues, they will address them with law enforcement leadership, he said.

Cole’s attacker was ultimately brought to court, but her jail sentence was suspended in exchange for probation.

When Cole talked to her colleagues at a bank and attorneys she’d contacted about what happened, they questioned why she took the bus in the first place, she said.

“The impression I got from people here is that, in Charlotte, it’s not viewed as a convenience. It’s viewed as for people who have no other option. Which, for me, is sad,” Cole said.

She also wonders if others who are attacked while just trying to get from spot A to spot B in town are taken seriously and their assailants get charged.

“I had the time and resources to make sure that my complaint was heard, recognizing that not everybody that this might happen to can.”

Observer reporter Mary Ramsey contributed to this reporting.

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