(The Center Square) – Charlotte welcomed its new police chief Friday morning, and by nightfall was returned to the spotlight of light rail train safety and the nation’s debate on immigration, two recent flashpoints this time coming together in one case.
Court filings confirmed the suspect in a stabbing on the Blue Line in the northeastern part of the city was illegally in America and had at least once been deported. Oscar Solarzano, 33, said the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, is charged with first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon and is jailed without bond.
The victim in the afternoon attack was hospitalized with critical injuries.
Just hours earlier in the morning, Estella Patterson was sworn in as the new police chief. She’s leading a unit for a city still embattled by more than 400 arrests during Charlotte’s Web, an enhanced enforcement of federal immigration law last month, and stung by the stabbing death of Iryna Zarutska on a light rail train 106 days earlier.
In that Aug. 22 attack, it happened late at night and the suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., had been arrested 14 times previously since 2011. It was part of the conversation leading the General Assembly to implement policy enacted last Monday that in part denies cashless bail and removes the unwritten moratorium on the death penalty, a legislation known as Iryna’s Law.
On Nov. 15, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol began its operation. Criminal records for some of those arrested included domestic violence, battery, aggravated assault, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault on a police officer, breaking and entering, larceny, driving while intoxicated, and hit-and-run.
Democrats in the mayor’s office in Charlotte – Vi Lyles – and the majorities on the city’s council and county’s commission have been the leading voices among sympathizers to immigrants both lawfully and unlawfully present in the state and in particular the nation’s 14th largest city. Notably joining them have been first-term Democratic Gov. Josh Stein and U.S. Senate candidate Roy Cooper, a former four-term state attorney general and two-term governor.
Stein and Cooper were the state’s attorney generals since 2000 prior to Jeff Jackson taking office this year.
There have also been more calls for strengthened law enforcement in the city. Among that cadre was U.S. Reps. Rev. Mark Harris, Pat Harrigan and Chuck Edwards on Nov. 5 asking Stein to send the National Guard to the city. He declined.
