As crime emerges at a flashpoint in the race for North Carolina's vacant Senate seat, leading Democrat Roy Cooper, who served as the state's governor from 2017 through 2025, doesn't want to talk about the uptick of seemingly random stabbings on the Charlotte light rail by violent repeat criminals. Cooper refused to comment on the latest attack, which was committed by a twice-deported illegal immigrant from Honduras with a lengthy criminal rap sheet, with his campaign instead sending the Washington Free Beacon an unrelated statement attacking his Republican opponent as a "Big Oil lobbyist."
The illegal immigrant, Oscar Gerardo Solorzano-Garcia, boarded the Charlotte light rail on Dec. 5, consumed a large quantity of an alcoholic drink known as Beatbox, and began yelling indiscriminately before he stabbed another passenger in the chest with an "extremely large fixed-blade knife," according to documents charging him with attempted first-degree murder. Days later, the FBI revealed Solorzano-Garcia should have never been in the United States after having been convicted of robbery in 2012, arrested for aggravated battery with a deadly weapon in 2016, deported from the country in 2018, and deported again in 2021 after being convicted of illegal reentry.
But the Cooper campaign did not address the incident when asked to comment on the latest Charlotte light rail stabbing, with a spokesperson instead providing a boilerplate statement attacking former RNC chairman Michael Whatley that the campaign has previously supplied verbatim twice to the Free Beacon and to several other news outlets dating back to September.
"Roy Cooper is the only candidate who spent his career prosecuting violent criminals and keeping thousands of them behind bars as attorney general, and signing tough on crime laws and stricter bail and pretrial release rules as governor," a Cooper campaign spokesperson told the Free Beacon. "DC insider and Big Oil lobbyist Michael Whatley is desperate to distract from his support for cuts to law enforcement that make North Carolinians less safe."
Solorzano-Garcia's unprovoked subway stabbing comes on the heels of the senseless stabbing murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on the Charlotte light rail in August at the hands of another repeat criminal, who boasted, "I got that white girl" during the unprovoked assault. Surveillance footage of Zarutska's murder went viral in August, but Cooper waited three weeks to offer a statement on the incident, calling it a "horrible tragedy" as he accused his expected Republican challenger, Whatley, of using "her death for political points."
It's not clear how Solorzano-Garcia made his way back into the United States a third time, but it's no surprise he made his way back to Mecklenburg County. Outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.), who is vacating the Senate seat Cooper now seeks, accused the then-governor in 2022 of having "effectively declared North Carolina a sanctuary state" after he vetoed a bill that would have required state sheriffs to cooperate with ICE when illegal immigrants are detained for violent crimes. And in April, Tillis labeled Mecklenburg County one of nine "sanctuary jurisdictions" across the state for refusing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. North Carolina became a magnet for illegal immigrants on Cooper's watch: The state's illegal immigrant population soared by 100,000 between 2021 and 2023 alone, according to the Pew Research Center.
Whatley said he's not surprised Cooper doesn't want to address the random stabbings on the Charlotte light rail, saying it's the expected result of Cooper's soft-on-crime policies as North Carolina's governor from 2017 to 2025. Whatley said that includes Cooper's creation of a "racial equity" task force that pushed for the elimination of cash bail for Class I misdemeanors—the same policy that led to the release of Zarutska's killer not long before her murder—his appointment of several judges across the state who granted leniency to repeat violent offenders who went on to commit additional crimes, and his decision to commute the death sentences of 15 convicted killers on his last day in office, much to the dismay of the prosecutors who put them behind bars.
"Roy Cooper put in place his executive order where he wanted to reimagine law enforcement and create pretrial release and cashless bail. It created a revolving door which has put these violent criminals back on the streets again, and again, and again," Whatley told the Free Beacon. "It unfortunately set up the city of Charlotte to be a dangerous place. I strongly believe the highest function of any government needs to be protecting its citizens. When it comes to that, Roy Cooper definitely gets a failing grade."
Cooper's crime stances could come back to haunt him next year, as public opinion polls show a strong majority of Americans believe crime is "unacceptably high," with 44 percent of the electorate saying they trust Republicans to handle the issue, compared to just 22 percent who favor the Democrats' approach to crime.
"Voters are going to act accordingly," Whatley said. "The fact is Roy Cooper is running his campaign from the basement right now. He is absolutely looking the other way on crime, which is tremendously important to the voters of North Carolina and he has an absolutely terrible record on it."
