A North Carolina woman was found 450 miles away in Florida and arrested this week on charges she randomly stabbed a pregnant mother with a steak knife in the parking lot of a popular Charlotte grocery store in March.
Marvina Butler-Hardy, 40, was detained by a Florida Highway Patrol in the Jacksonville area during a traffic stop Monday when alert troopers pulled her over because she had a cracked windshield, not knowing that she was a fugitive from justice.
After she produced an ID, they discovered she was wanted on a “be on the lookout” bulletin for allegedly attacking the pregnant woman while she was removing her three–year–old son out of the car outside of a Harris Teeter supermarket on the late morning of March 18.
That attack was purely at random, Charlotte police said. The victim did not know the suspect.
North Carolina authorities charged Butler-Hardly with assault with a deadly weapon and battery of an unborn child, according to multiple news outlets.
Butler-Hardy has at least nine prior convictions, including six felonies and three misdemeanors, the Daily Mail reported.
The Waxhaw woman was released from prison last April and completed post-release supervision in January, according to Fox News Digital.
The pregnant mother, 38, her identity withheld by authorities and news outlets, said she had no idea who her attacker was or why she assaulted her.
Her assailant stabbed her in the middle of the chest, but the steak knife hit solid bone, narrowly sparing major organs in the same area. She was hospitalized and later released, but the heinous attack left her with a scar, she said.
“I’m hoping this charge is enough to keep her behind bars, that’s for sure,’ she told WSOC TV. ”I don’t know the amount of mug shots you see of this woman. You wouldn’t think that she would be on the streets.”
The stabbing victim’s child was not injured.
Last week, Charlotte authorities released surveillance footage of Butler-Hardy and her car and asked for help in finding her.
Police reported that her vehicle had a taped-up window and a paper license tag, urging the public to focus on those identifying features.
That description, however, is not what alerted Florida troopers.
When they spotted Butler-Hardy’s silver Hyundai heading south from the Jacksonville area on I–95 on Monday, they pulled her over simply because they saw a cracked windshield they felt was obstructing the driver’s view, according to according to WSOC-TV.
The suspect presented an ID card, explaining to the trooper that her license was suspended. Her name linked her to the alert from Charlotte police.
Troopers took her to Florida’s Flagler County Jail. The highway patrol said Butler-Hardy will soon be taken back to North Carolina to face her charges.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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