Charlotte city officials speak about the deadly light rail stabbing that is receiving national attention

Last Friday in Southend on the Blue Line what happened

Irina Zaruska was was murdered um and I want to

start off expressing my condolences to her friends and her

family

It's been a difficult and challenging week for these three

men

Brent Cagle the interim CEO of Katz Eric Osness Katz's

chief safety and Security officer and Lee Ratliff assistant chief

for professional security services the company Katz contracts with to

keep our transit system safe

This kind of senseless violence um it shakes us all

it's shaken the community

It's shaken our riders it's it's shaken our employees

I'm sure you all have seen the surveillance video from

on board

What can you tell us that you see in that

video It was a pretty horrific uh event

It was a random act something that I don't feel

that any person

Uh from a law enforcement perspective security perspective could have

done anything to prevent that

What's even more haunting about this if you look at

the video policing is about monitoring behavior

There was absolutely no behavioral cues that would have triggered

an interaction with this individual

This individual was

Sitting down for all intents and purposes looked like he

was just having a normal train ride

There was nothing about his demeanor he wasn't sweating he

wasn't talking to himself he wasn't he wasn't interfacing in

a manner that would have triggered attention to him that

he was about to do a heinous act and then

all of a sudden you see his face change he

commits the act

And It's in a split second

In 6 seconds they tell us Brown stabbed Zarutska to

death out of nowhere

Brown's mother tells us her son suffers from schizophrenia and

was homeless

Katz says there was not a security guard on that

train when this all happened

Was there a security failure that night No

No no

On this night I think that while the outcome is

horrific is terrible the system the processes they all functioned

as they should have on that night now I think

knowing what we know now

There may have been other opportunities um

For this for this person um to have got the

help they needed or to you know um uh not

been where they were that night but on this night

I I believe that the process has worked

I wanna talk about the the things that were successful

that night um the 911 call went in OK

And then the response from the call coming in 6

minutes this person was in police custody

You say your systems and policies worked but a woman

died absolutely and and I acknowledge that we have heard

from law enforcement that there is power in presence that

if he may have seen a guard on board that

train that night he could have thought twice before he

did what he did

I can't put a police officer or security officer on

every street in Charlotte

It's just not feasible

It's not from a budget standpoint um from a hiring

standpoint the perception of having security and presence is always

great and we want to increase those numbers right But

at the end of the day if someone wants to

commit a violent crime

And that crime can be done in seconds

OK There's nothing that a police officer can do to

stop that act from happening

We can react to it but to prevent it it's

not a lot we could do

Ratliff's professional security services company has 184 security officers working

our transit system

He has the budget to hire up to 219

He says he's open to adding more but that would

be a decision the city has to make and fund

Is there a desire To see more guards on our

transit there is absolutely a desire to understand what happened

and how we can move forward and and learn from

that but I also know that when we think about

trying to have um security personnel everywhere throughout the system

every day all day it's a challenge it's not something

that is is feasible we wanna be this large big

city uh a world class city

There are other transit systems in this country that have

a goal of putting two officers on every single train

from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. let's say

Why can't we do that here We can do anything

we choose to do when we choose to do it

right But the thing I wanna look at is there

there's budgets there's numbers there's all these things that go

and the factor into those decisions and how they're made

Conversations and decisions that are garnering more attention but came

too late for an immigrant looking for a better life

I can't change what took place but what I can

say is that we're gonna learn from it and we're

gonna grow from it and we're gonna become better for

from it and I want uh the family to know

um that my heart goes out to them