Michelle Williams-McNair

Mecklenburg County Magistrate Michelle Williams-McNair set a $3,000 bond — payable for a few hundred dollars through a bondsman — for a woman charged with striking a Charlotte police officer with her car and fleeing the scene. About a month later, while still free on that bond, the same woman was charged with running over her ex-boyfriend's foot with a different car.

Around 3:25 a.m. on March 1, 2026, Charlotte police responded to a street takeover in a Harris Teeter parking lot on Smith Farm Road. As officers tried to clear the lot, one approached a black Kia Optima driven by 25-year-old Tanaezah "Ta'Nezah" Austin and gave her verbal commands to stop. According to the arrest affidavit, Austin struck the officer with her car as he stood directly in front of it, rolling him over the hood, then fled. He was taken to a hospital and treated for injuries described as minor.

Austin was arrested the next day and charged with assault with a deadly weapon on emergency personnel — her car, under North Carolina law, was the deadly weapon. Williams-McNair set her bond at $3,000. Austin posted it and was released within about a day of her arrest.

The bond amount drew immediate, public criticism from Charlotte police. "To see a $3,000 bond for an offender when the intent to flee was clearly there is pathetic," Dan Redford, president of the Charlotte Fraternal Order of Police, said at the time.

On April 2, 2026 — while the street-takeover charge was still pending — Charlotte police say Austin ran over her ex-boyfriend's foot with a red Jeep Patriot as he tried to leave her home during an argument. She was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and a crime of domestic violence, and this time was released on a $10,000 bond — more than three times what Williams-McNair had set for striking a police officer with a car weeks earlier.

North Carolina gives magistrates wide discretion to set bond, and nothing here says Williams-McNair broke a rule in doing so. But the numbers are what they are: a $3,000 bond, payable for a few hundred dollars, freed a woman accused of hitting a police officer with her car — and weeks later, she's accused of hitting someone else with one, too.