Authorities say a Florida trooper stopped the suspect’s vehicle days after Charlotte police released surveillance video from the grocery store.
FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. — A Florida traffic stop on Interstate 95 brought an end to the search for a woman accused of stabbing a pregnant mother outside a Charlotte grocery store, turning a broad daylight assault into a two-state criminal case centered on extradition and unanswered motive.
The arrest matters because it gave Charlotte-Mecklenburg police their first major break in a case they had publicly framed as a random attack. Investigators say Marvina Butler-Hardy is the woman who stabbed a 38-year-old pregnant mother outside the Harris Teeter in the Cotswold shopping area on March 18 while the victim was with her 3-year-old child. The mother survived, her unborn child was not harmed, and police now say Butler-Hardy is awaiting transfer back to Mecklenburg County to face felony charges.
According to local reporting based on court records and police statements, the arrest began with a lookout for a silver Hyundai traveling south on I-95 from the Jacksonville area. The vehicle in the alert was described as having a paper tag and a taped-up window. A Florida Highway Patrol trooper in Flagler County spotted a silver Hyundai being driven by a woman and made a stop after noticing a large crack in the windshield that obstructed the driver’s view. When the driver was asked for identification, she handed over a North Carolina ID card rather than a driver’s license and said her license was suspended, according to the reporting. Another trooper checked the name and confirmed that the woman matched a suspect wanted out of Mecklenburg County. After the arrest, officers said they found a North Carolina paper tag on the rear seat, and tape that had appeared to be on the window had been peeled away.
That roadside encounter on March 31 traced back to a much shorter but more violent episode in Charlotte on March 18. Police say the stabbing happened shortly before 11:30 a.m. outside the Harris Teeter on Sharon Amity Road in the Cotswold Village Shopping Center. The victim later said she was getting her son out of the car when a woman approached with a steak knife and stabbed her in the chest. She told local reporters that the blade hit bone and missed major organs. Officers who arrived found her suffering from injuries that were later described as non-life-threatening. Her toddler was not hurt, and police said the unborn baby also was unharmed. In the immediate aftermath, the case appeared especially difficult because detectives quickly concluded there had been no prior relationship between the two women.
Investigators used video and public outreach to close that gap. CMPD released surveillance footage on March 26 and said the woman seen leaving the store was believed to have stabbed the victim in the parking lot moments later. WCCB reported that the suspect had been seen inside the grocery store before the attack, a detail that may become important if prosecutors later try to establish planning or a sequence of movements. Detective Ashley Phillips said in a police video that the victim and suspect did not know each other and had no prior interactions. That statement eliminated one of the most common explanations for a stabbing case and made public identification more important. Authorities said numerous community tips helped lead to Butler-Hardy’s location. Even now, the public record leaves core questions open: why the victim was attacked, whether she was specifically selected, and what the suspect did in the hours between the stabbing and the later out-of-state stop.
The legal path ahead is more straightforward than the motive. Charlotte police have said Butler-Hardy will face charges of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill or inflict serious injury and battery of an unborn child once she is back in North Carolina. She was being held in the Flagler County jail awaiting extradition, according to local reports. Outlets in Charlotte have also reported that Butler-Hardy has an extensive criminal history, including assault-related cases and firearm-related charges in Mecklenburg County. That history may shape how prosecutors argue the case, but the public case file that matters most will be built from the evidence in this incident: the surveillance footage, witness accounts, 911 calls, the victim’s medical records and whatever investigators recover from the suspect’s vehicle, phone and travel trail. No Mecklenburg court date had been publicly set in the latest reports.
The human reaction to the case has split cleanly between shock and relief. A worker in the shopping center, Sarah Click, told local media that the idea of a person suddenly rushing another person with a knife in such an ordinary setting felt “like a horror film.” The victim offered a more restrained but telling reaction after the arrest, saying it was a relief to know the suspect was not free to do the same thing to someone else or return to harm her again. Those voices bookend the story: fear in the shopping center on the day of the attack, and a measure of calm after a highway stop hundreds of miles away. Between those points is an investigation that moved from grainy video and public appeals to a patrol car on the shoulder of I-95.
Butler-Hardy remains in custody in Florida, and the next expected step is her extradition to Mecklenburg County, where the case will shift from a search effort to formal court proceedings.
Author note: Last updated April 21, 2026.