ATLANTA — The federal government will review safety protocols and security spending at Atlanta’s transit agency after two stabbing attacks last week, one of them fatal.
The investigation comes as Atlanta’s Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority was supposed to be celebrating an important milestone with a public unveiling of its new high-tech railcars and fare gates.
MARTA has been upgrading its trains and stations in preparation for visitors from across the globe for the FIFA World Cup, which begins in Atlanta on June 15.
“Every American should be disturbed by the horrific crimes we have seen on MARTA in the last month,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy said in a statement Thursday, when he ordered the Federal Transit Administration to launch an investigation.
The first stabbing occurred after lunchtime on May 24 when a 40-year-old man was attacked in an Atlanta MARTA station. The next one, just before noon on Saturday south of downtown, left a great-grandmother from Atlanta dead.
Margaret Swan, 66, was looking at her phone while seated on a train headed away from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, as many visitors will soon be doing.
Surveillance footage showed a man standing nearby as he pulled a folding knife from his right pants pocket and stabbed her more than 20 times around the chest and neck, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in a U.S. magistrate judge’s courtroom in Atlanta.
Terrified passengers ran to the other side of the train, calling for help.
John Elijah Matthews, 25, of Decatur, was arrested at the next stop, the Oakland City station, and charged in the killing, according to the complaint, which was filed by an FBI special agent.
Matthews was formally accused on charges of committing Violence Against a Mass Transportation System.
The U.S. attorney general will decide whether to seek the death penalty, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Theodore S. Hertzberg said in a statement afterward.
“Atlantans and the many people who will soon visit for the FIFA World Cup deserve to travel free from fear of a violent attack,” Hertzberg said.
MARTA has been installing a new payment system intended to ease friction at fare gates. It allows riders to tap their phones to pay. Riders can now add a MARTA Breeze transit card to their phone’s payment system without downloading the MARTA application.
Previously, riders had to use the Breeze Mobile app, which has a rating of 1.5 out of five stars in Apple’s App Store.
MARTA has also been updating some of its rolling stock, adding railcars that feature open gangways, digital customer information displays and wireless charging stations.
The new CQ400 railcars, built by the Swiss company Stadler, are “the most technologically advanced in the country,” MARTA said last week, as it announced an unveiling for this week.
The agency had planned to show off the new railcars at an event for reporters on Thursday at its Avondale station in Decatur.
But on Tuesday, the day Matthews was charged in connection with Swan’s death, the agency canceled the event.
The new railcars were still being tested and were not ready to enter “revenue service,” a spokeswoman explained. “We are committed to ensuring all testing and safety certifications are complete before the railcars begin serving riders.”
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens had planned to attend, along with other dignitaries, including Fulton County Commission Chairman Robb Pitts.
The national attention for MARTA comes during a peak in Georgia’s election cycle, with primary runoffs on June 16.
Pitts, a Democrat, is locked in a contest with a challenger. So are Republicans, including Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a candidate for governor against billionaire Rick Jackson, and former state Sen. John F. Kennedy, who is running against Sen. Greg Dolezal, R-Cumming, for the post that Jones will vacate at year’s end.
Both Jones and Kennedy seized on MARTA’s recent troubles.
Kennedy blamed MARTA for leaving fare gates open last month.
The agency had been allowing free access to trains while it upgraded its payment system. It had planned to close the gates and begin charging on May 2, but the “customer grace period” was extended to May 30 due to delays.
“The installation of our better Breeze system was not as far along as we’d hoped,” MARTA’s interim general manager and CEO, Jonathan Hunt, said at the time.
Kennedy said in a campaign statement Wednesday that the fact that anyone could enter the system without paying had created “an enormous burden” for police, adding that it “undermines the safety and security of Georgians who rely” on the trains.
Jones seized on the moment Tuesday, the day Matthews was charged, saying “a deranged homeless man” had stabbed a woman to death.
Jones’ campaign said that if he were to win the governor’s office, he would deploy state troopers on trains if necessary. Jones noted that MARTA will be on a world stage soon.
“Atlanta is hosting the World Cup this summer and this is an embarrassment and a tragedy,” he said. “This has to stop.”