Suspect charged in stabbing on Charlotte light rail train
Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — A suspect has been charged in the Friday stabbing on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, according to police.
Oscar Solarzano, 33, has been charged with five counts including attempted first degree murder, assault with deadly weapon serious injury and carrying concealed weapon, according to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department.
The male victim was found with a stab wound just before 5 p.m. near North Brevard Street and East 22nd Street, where the train appeared to have stopped between stations, Charlotte ABC affiliate WSOC reported.
The victim was transported to Novant Health Presbyterian with serious injuries but is in stable condition, according to the Mecklenburg EMS Agency.
Solarzano was apprehended by officers shortly after the stabbing and was transported to the division where he was interviewed by detectives, police said.
Solarzano was transported to the custody of the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office after the interview concluded, police said.
This incident comes months after a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee was fatally stabbed while riding the Blue Line on the Charlotte light rail. The suspect, 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr., was charged with first-degree murder and was indicted in October on federal charges of violence against a railroad carrier and mass transportation system resulting in death.
Any witnesses or anyone with any information on the stabbing Friday are asked to call Charlotte Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600, use the Charlotte Crime Stoppers P3 Tips Mobile App or visit the Charlotte Crime Stoppers website.
Alan Jackson, attorney of Nick Reiner, appears in court to defend Reiner on murder charges on December 17, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. (Jae C. Hong-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Nick Reiner, the son of slain director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner, has retained a high-profile attorney to represent him as he faces murder charges in their killing.
Alan Jackson, who defended Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein and Karen Read has been serving as the 32-year-old’s attorney. Jackson has been in contact with Nick Reiner since he was arrested Sunday and speaking to the press as the case develops.
“Every inmate has to be medically cleared before they can be transferred to court, he has not been medically cleared. It’s just a procedural issue,” Jackson told reporters on Tuesday.
Rob Reiner and Singer were found stabbed to death in their Los Angeles home Sunday afternoon, and their son was arrested less than a day later. The Los Angeles District Attorney charged Nick Reiner with first degree murder on Tuesday.
The arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 7.
“There are very, very complex and serious issues that are associated with this case,” Jackson told reporters after a court hearing on Wednesday. “These need to be thoroughly but very carefully dealt with and examined and looked at and analyzed.”
“We ask that during this process, you allow the system to move forward in the way that it was designed to move forward, not with the rush to judgment, not with jumping to conclusions, but with restraint and with dignity and with the respect that this system and this process deserves and that the family deserves,” he added.
Jackson also said, “our hearts go out to the entire Reiner family.”
This case is the latest of several major cases that Jackson has taken on in his long legal career.
Jackson spent the beginning of his law career in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office, where he served as assistant head deputy for the Major Crimes Division. One of his biggest prosecutions was the murder case against music producer Phil Spector.
After one mistrial, Spector was ultimately convicted in 2009 and sentenced to 19 years to life in prison.
Jackson ran for LA district attorney in 2012 but lost the election. He shifted to private practice and amassed a who’s who of clients.
He represented Kevin Spacey after the actor was charged in 2019 of indecent assault and battery. Spacey pleaded not guilty and the charges were ultimately dropped after the prosecutors’ case began to fall apart under scrutiny by the defense.
“This entire case is completely compromised” by the accuser’s decision to take the Fifth [Amendment],” Jackson told the judge in the case. “He’s the sole witness than can establish the circumstances of his allegation.”
Jackson represented disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein in his Los Angeles criminal trial over sexual assault charges in 2022.
The attorney told the jury in his closing argument that the evidence was “smoke and mirrors” and accused the women who testified of being “fame and fortune seekers.”
In a separate case that didn’t involve Jackson, Weinstein had been convicted in a New York court prior to the LA case on similar charges. This was overturned on appeal — he was convicted on one count of engaging in criminal sex but acquitted on a second count in his sex crimes retrial in New York. The judge declared a mistrial on a third-degree rape count.
He was ultimately convicted in the LA trial on Dec. 19, 2022, and sentenced to 16 years in prison. He has appealed that conviction — Jackson is not representing him in the appeal.
Recently, Jackson represented Karen Read, a Massachusetts woman who was charged with killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, in January 2022.
A murder trial against Read led to a mistrial in 2024 after jurors could not come to a verdict. In June, Read was acquitted in a second trial on second-degree murder and leaving a scene of personal injury and death charges.
The jury found her guilty of operating under the influence of liquor. The judge immediately sentenced her to one year of probation, the standard for a first-time offense.
A sign featuring the Department of Justice building is seen on Thursday, December 4, 2025. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The federal judge who presided over the 2019 criminal case against convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein has became the third judge to grant a Justice Department motion to unseal grand jury materials and other undisclosed evidence from the government’s investigative files.
U.S. District Judge Richard Berman of the Southern District of New York issued a four-page order Tuesday that determined that Congress — in passing the Epstein Files Transparency Act last month — clearly indicated that the materials from his criminal case should be publicly disclosed and that traditional rules of grand jury secrecy were overridden by the act.
“The ‘plain language’ of the Epstein Files Transparency Act unequivocally intends to make public Epstein grand jury materials and discovery materials covered by the Epstein Protective Order,” Berman wrote.
This is the third — and final — ruling on the Justice Department’s motions to lift restrictions on materials related to criminal investigations and prosecutions of Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell.
It comes one day after Judge Paul Engelmayer granted the DOJ’s motion to release grand jury materials and other nonpublic evidence from Maxwell’s criminal case.
Judge Rodney Smith granted a similar request from the Justice Department for records associated with the first federal investigation of Epstein in Florida in the mid-2000s.
Berman, who presided over Epstein’s 2019 arraignment in New York and ordered him detained pending trial, stressed the need to protect the privacy and safety of alleged victims if and when the records from the case are publicly disclosed by the DOJ.
“The Court hereby grants the Government’s motion in accordance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act and with the unequivocal right of Epstein victims to have their identify and privacy protected,” Berman wrote.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial.
The booking photo for William Stevenson. (New Castle County Police)
(NEW CASTLE COUNTY, Del.) — Former first lady Jill Biden’s ex-husband has been charged with murdering his wife following an “extensive weeks-long investigation,” police in Delaware announced on Tuesday.
Police officers responding to a “reported domestic dispute” at a home in the Wilmington community of Oak Hill on Dec. 28 found Linda Stevenson, 64, unresponsive on the living room floor, according to police. Her husband, William “Bill” Stevenson, had called 911, police said at the time.
A grand jury in New Castle County on Monday indicted Stevenson, 77, with first-degree murder in connection with his wife’s death, according to police.
The indictment alleges he “did intentionally cause the death” of his wife.
Detectives took Stevenson into custody at his home without incident, police said. He has since been arraigned and is being held in the Howard Young Correctional Institution in Wilmington after failing to post $500,000 bail, police said.
It is unclear if Stevenson has an attorney.
Officers responded to the Stevensons’ home after 11 p.m. on Dec. 28 and attempted lifesaving measures, but Linda Stevenson was later pronounced dead, police said.
Detectives from the New Castle County Police Department’s Criminal Investigations Unit responded to the scene to assume the investigation, officials said.
No additional details, including the cause of death, have been released.
Linda Stevenson ran a bookkeeping business and was “deeply family-oriented,” according to her obituary, which did not mention her husband.
Bill Stevenson founded a popular bar and music hall in the early 1970s in Newark, Delaware. He is the former husband of Jill Biden, the Delaware Department of Justice confirmed to ABC News. The two were married for five years before divorcing in 1975.
Jill Biden married former President Joe Biden two years later, in 1977.
