City should have prevented shooting at Charlotte transit center, lawsuit alleges
The city of Charlotte and the private security company it hired to keep its buses and trains safe failed when an innocent 31-year-old bystander died in crossfire at the uptown transit center, a new lawsuit claims.
Qualo Daniels was shot 360 steps away from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department headquarters, according to court documents. The lawsuit filed by his family’s lawyer comes as the city and its policing strategies face criticism and several investigations over the fatal light rail stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska last month.
Zarutska, 23, died in a public knife attack on Charlotte Area Transit System’s Lynx Blue Line in late August, and her death heightened discussions about safety on and near the city’s public transit.
The lawsuit filed by the Daniels family attorney claims the city lied to customers — including Daniels — when it advertised that “Safety is CATS No. 1 priority.”
Daniels was shot in the head in April as two people who had been in a fight started firing shots at each other, according to the lawsuit filed in Mecklenburg Superior Court on Monday.
Daniels had stopped at the food court inside the transit center, which sits across from the Spectrum Center, before going out for a friends’ birthday, attorney Dwayne Pennant wrote in the lawsuit.
According to police reports, a fight between Jeremiah Deshawn McCree and Deion Marquise Futrell escalated into a gun fight at about 10:20 p.m. on April 12.
McCree shot first, according to CMPD. Then Futrell shot back in “self-defense,” according to the lawsuit.
That “errant ‘self-defense’ gunshot struck” Daniels in the head. He later died at the hospital.
Police charged McCree with attempted first-degree murder, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
The lawsuit was filed against the city and “Professional Police Services” but also names CMPD and CATS. In December, CATS contracted with the private firm Professional Security Services to provide security for the transit system.
They were all “responsible for exercising reasonable care to discover criminal activity at the [transit center] and to reasonably prevent or control such criminal activity upon its discovery,” according to the lawsuit.
Daniels’ family is claiming the city and company’s negligence “directly and proximately caused [Daniels] to die unnecessarily.”
They are asking for a total of more than $50,000 in hospital expenses, compensation for pain and suffering and funeral expenses.
They also say the city failed to properly train and hire its employees, both CMPD officers and security guards.
Since 2015, there have been more than 1,000 aggravated assaults, 35 homicides and 500 weapons law violations at or close to the uptown transit center, according to CMPD data referenced in the lawsuit.
CATS, in an unsigned email from its public affairs division, declined to comment Tuesday on the lawsuit.
This story was originally published September 15, 2025 at 1:53 PM.
