Charlotte CATS bus driver: Ethan Rivera’s mom responds to the arrest

Sylvia Rivera said she was called at 7:38 a.m. Tuesday: a man suspected of killing her son has been arrested.

Rivera said she was “so excited” when she saw the room.

“When he told me they caught him, I just couldn’t stop shivering,” Rivera said in an interview with the Observer over the phone from New York.

Her son, Ethan Rivera, worked as a bus driver at the Charlotte Area Transit System for just over a year when he was shot dead on Feb. 11 as a result of what Charlotte-Mecklenburg police call a road accident. He died a day later.

After a two-week search, 21-year-old Daryan Drew Tavicit was detained in Shawnee, Kansas, CMPD Captain Joel McNally said during a news conference Tuesday. Tavichit will be extradited and charged with murder and shooting at a seized car, McNally said.

“Now I am relieved that he has left the streets and he can’t hurt anyone anymore,” Sylvia Rivera said.

She said she still did not understand why the “verbal quarrel” led to her son’s death.

“What were you told so harshly that you had to pull out a gun?” Said Rivera.

Rivera is a “good soul,” Mom says

Ethan Rivera moved from New York to North Carolina to be closer to his daughter and son so that they “had a father in their lives,” his mother said.

“And now they don’t,” said Sylvia Rivera.

Ethan Rivera loved to ride the bus, which his mother called her “dream job”.

“He was very happy with what he was doing,” she said.

Since Rivera was shot, a lot CATS workers called increased securityincluding on City Council meeting on Monday.

“I’m behind the bus drivers,” said Sylvia Rivera. “And anyone who drives a train or bus around town needs to be protected because it can happen to any of them.”

She said her son can be stubborn at times and he was funny. All North Carolina residents, she said, told her that Ethan “always had a smile on his face” and that “he has a good heart.”

“He was a good soul, you know? Beautiful eyes, a beautiful smile, and he was a good man, ”said Sylvia Rivera.