The victim said she was unloading her toddler when a woman she had never seen before came at her with a knife.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A pregnant Charlotte woman who was stabbed outside a grocery store while getting her 3-year-old out of a car says she is relieved the suspect is now in custody, though she still has no explanation for why she was attacked.
The victim’s account has become one of the clearest windows into a case police say was random from the start. Investigators say the March 18 stabbing happened outside the Harris Teeter in Cotswold and that the suspect, Marvina Butler-Hardy, had no prior relationship with the 38-year-old mother. The woman survived, her unborn child was not harmed, and her toddler was safe, but the attack left her with a chest wound, a scar and lingering fear while police searched for the suspect across state lines.
Speaking after the arrest, the victim told local reporters that she had been focused on her child when the violence began. She said she was getting her son out of the car in the Harris Teeter parking lot in the middle of the day when the suspect came at her with a steak knife. She said the wound landed in the middle of her chest, struck bone and narrowly missed major organs. “It definitely brings relief,” she said after learning the suspect had been arrested, adding that she was grateful the woman was no longer free to hurt other people or come after her again. That account added intimate detail to what police had first described in broader terms when officers responded shortly before 11:30 a.m. on March 18 and found a pregnant woman with non-life-threatening injuries in a busy shopping center off Sharon Amity Road.
The response in those first minutes came from strangers as much as from police and medics. Newly released 911 calls captured people urgently asking for help. One caller told dispatchers, “We need medic pronto,” while another said someone had gotten out of a car and stabbed a woman. The call logs identified the victim as 38 and confirmed to dispatch that she was pregnant. Witnesses stepped in before emergency crews arrived, according to WSOC’s reporting, and workers in the shopping center quickly understood something serious had happened from the number of police cars and the rush of activity outside. For the victim, the public nature of the assault is part of what makes the case so jarring. She was not isolated or in a remote area. She was in daylight, at a neighborhood grocery store, doing a routine task with a child beside her when the attack came.
Police have said little publicly about motive because they still do not appear to have one. Detective Ashley Phillips said in a police video that the victim and suspect did not know each other. That statement has been repeated across coverage because it strips away the common assumptions people make about violent crime. There has been no public claim of a dispute, domestic tie or earlier confrontation. Instead, detectives used surveillance video to try to identify the woman they believed had left the store and then attacked the victim in the parking lot. CMPD released that footage on March 26, about a week after the stabbing. WCCB reported that the woman had been seen inside the store before the assault. What investigators have not yet publicly explained is whether the suspect chose the victim at random in the moment, trailed her out of the store or had some other reason for being in the parking lot.
The arrest shifted attention from the victim’s recovery to the mechanics of the case. Butler-Hardy was found in Flagler County, Florida, after a Highway Patrol trooper stopped a silver Hyundai on Interstate 95. Local reports say police had circulated a lookout for a silver Hyundai linked to the Charlotte case and described it as having a paper tag and a taped-up window. A trooper pulled over a car with a badly cracked windshield, then learned the driver was using an ID card rather than a valid license. Another trooper matched the name to the Mecklenburg County warrant. Authorities have said Butler-Hardy will be extradited to Charlotte and charged with assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill or inflict serious injury and battery of an unborn child. Reports have also described her as having an extensive criminal history, though prosecutors have not publicly detailed how that record might affect bond or later court proceedings in this case.
People who work in the shopping center have described the incident in emotional but simple terms: it shattered the ordinary feel of the place. Sarah Click, a worker there, said seeing the large police response and hearing what happened was deeply unsettling. She told local media that the idea of someone suddenly charging at another person in that setting felt “like a horror film.” The victim’s own words carry a different weight. She has spoken not about spectacle but about survival, saying she does not understand why she was targeted and hopes the case keeps the suspect off the street. Together, those voices place the story on two levels at once: a public crime scene that rattled a neighborhood and a private act of recovery still unfolding for a mother who was simply trying to get her child out of the car.
The case now stands at the point between arrest and extradition, with Butler-Hardy in a Florida jail and the next key step being her return to Mecklenburg County for court proceedings that could begin to answer what happened and why.
Author note: Last updated April 21, 2026.