Iryna’s murder unraveled the story the US tells itself, revealing a rotten justice system and a press built on selective empathy
The shocking murder of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte, NC train has become a flashpoint for debate about race and public safety in the US – and also about the role of the media in shaping progressive narratives and employing double standards.
RT takes a look at what happened and how the narrative over this brutal murder is shaping up.
What exactly happened, minute by minute
~9:45 pm, August 22, 2025. Zarutska boards the Lynx Blue Line light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina to go home from work. She is still wearing her pizzeria uniform and appears calm as surveillance video shows her entering the train car and choosing a seat. Just behind her, Decarlos Brown Jr. is already seated. The footage shows no interaction between the two. Zarutska sits, scrolling on her phone.
~9:50 pm. Roughly four minutes after the train departs, Brown pulls out a pocketknife, unfolds it, pauses, then stands up and fatally stabs Zarutska three times in the neck. She freezes, looking wide-eyed and panicked at the people around her. Bystanders turn or move away and do not approach. Then she collapses sideways, bleeding heavily onto the floor shortly thereafter.
Seconds after the attack. Brown walks away. As he proceeds down the aisle past confused passengers, blood appears to drip from the knife in his hand. He pulls off his hooded sweatshirt, bunches it up in one hand, and continues toward the far door.
~9:52 pm. Approximately two minutes after the stabbing, at least one passenger breaks from frozen shock and rushes toward Zarutska to try to help. Moments later, more people gather around in a futile attempt to render aid.
Train stops at next station. Brown exits. A folding knife is found near the platform. Police arrive and arrest him, matching clothing descriptions given by 911 callers. He has a laceration on his hand.
Aftermath. Inside the carriage, blood spreads out in large pools around Zarutska. She is declared dead at the scene. Brown was also taken to the hospital with a hand injury, released after treatment, and then formally charged with first-degree murder. He is later charged with committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system – a federal crime that carries a maximum punishment of life in prison or the death penalty. The federal case will proceed alongside his state first-degree murder charge.
What we know about the killer
Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, has a long criminal record dating back to 2011, and had of late been homeless. Arrest records show charges including armed robbery, breaking and entering, kidnapping, assault, firearm possession by a felon, and parole violations. Prison records show Brown spent six years in prison, followed by a year of probation.
When he was 22, Brown was charged in at least four separate cases that included shoplifting, larceny, breaking and entering and felony conspiracy. Less than a year later, Brown pulled a gun on a man at an apartment complex in Charlotte and robbed him.
His family asserts – a claim supported by some court documents – that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and was “hearing voices.” He claims that the government had inserted “material” into his body that controlled him.
In 2022, he attacked his sister Tracey Brown but the latter eventually dropped charges, claiming to be unwilling to press forward in a case against her own brother. He was also kicked out of his house by his own mother for his violent tendencies. Brown’s mother said her son should not have been freed after his most recent arrest in January.
Brown’s proclivity for crime is shared by several close family members. His older brother, Stacey Dejon Brown, was convicted in 2012 of second-degree murder, armed robbery, assault, and breaking and entering, and is currently serving a prison sentence. Their father also has multiple convictions for violent crime.
Why was this repeat offender still on the streets?
The question of why a man with 14 arrests and three felony convictions was still on the streets has been one of the central points of contention in the case.
Many legal experts believe that Brown’s case is part of a criminal justice system trend toward “progressive prosecution,” whereby prosecutors in many US cities decline to pursue charges in lower-level cases but that would still have previously entailed time behind bars. Republicans, including President Donald Trump, point to the trend of Democrat-led cities taking a soft touch with criminals and emphasizing rehabilitation over public safety.
Kenneth Corey, a former department chief for the New York City Police who now teaches at the University of Chicago Crime Lab’s Policing Leadership Academy, said that federal prosecutors’ offices often tell police and local officials they simply lack the financial resources to try more cases of felons in possession of a firearm. The issue of strained resources for fighting crime has not interfered with the more than $130 billion spent on funding Zarutska’s home country of Ukraine.
In 2014, Brown was initially charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm, which can be used by federal prosecutors to pull cases into the federal system, where penalties can be more severe. However, prosecutors did not take the case, and the state charge was dropped in exchange for a guilty plea on a charge of robbery using a deadly weapon.
In January 2025, another opportunity was missed to take Brown off the streets when Charlotte-Mecklenburg police arrested him for misusing the 911 service amid delusional claims about a “man-made material” controlling his body. Court records show he was released on a “written promise to appear” in court rather than held on cash bail.
He never showed up to his court date. It took more than six months for a court to order a mental evaluation after Brown told officers that he had been given a human-made substance that controlled when he ate, talked or walked.
It is unclear whether this assessment ever took place.
The decision to release Brown in January reportedly came from magistrate Teresa Stokes, who was appointed in 2023 by Clerk of Superior Court Elisa Chinn-Gary. The latter describes herself as a “Racial Equity Organizer“ and “Diversity & Inclusion Consultant.“
Republican lawmakers have publicly demanded Judge Stokes’ removal, citing the January release of Brown. Stokes has since come under national scrutiny over her qualifications.
A magistrate in North Carolina is not required to have a law degree, and Judge Stokes is not a member of the State Bar. In fact, she built her resume not inside a courtroom but in working with community mental health services and recovery programs. She co-owns a sober sports bar.
Mecklenburg County’s courts have long faced complaints of political patronage and opaque appointments. Magistrates are not elected, rarely face public scrutiny, and are approved by the superior court judge for the district – in this case a woman named Carla Archie, herself celebrated for her work with the Urban League and one-time head of the North Carolina Education Lottery’s supplier diversity program.
How a firestorm on X finally forced the media’s hand
The footage was made public on Friday, September 5, by the Charlotte Area Transit System and quickly began trending on social media. However, it was not picked up by a single major outlet. By Sunday, September 8, the lack of media attention was itself becoming a story. Elon Musk reposted a tweet by Russian-British journalist Konstantin Kisin expressing disgust with the stonewall silence.
The following day, Musk chimed in again, noting that the New York Times had still not even addressed the story.
When the NYT finally did, it called it an “accelerant” of arguments against Democratic policies and devoted most the article to framing the case as a right-wing narrative. The report also made reference to the fact that “in North Carolina….newspapers in the Jim Crow era often egregiously exaggerated stories about Black criminality.” The Jim Crow laws, which enforced racial segregation in the US South, were abolished in the mid-1960s.
Politico published an article that provided no footage of the incident, didn’t mention the respective races of those involved, and featured only a single photograph – of Donald Trump.
CNN’s Van Jones, meanwhile, appeared to empathize with the killer, saying he was a “hurting” man.
Conservative commentators have called attention to the perceived sluggishness of corporate media to shed light on a case that doesn’t advance what are seen as liberal narratives. Robby Soave, writing in The Hill, penned an op-ed titled ‘Media finally notices brutal Iryna Zarutska murder, blames MAGA for caring’, in which he argued that the tone of the coverage was “[annoyance]that conservatives are pointing out that people are being murdered.”
This, Soave and others pointed out, is in stark contrast to the extensive coverage black victims of violence at the hands of whites has received.
‘I got that white girl’?
Security footage with audio has emerged appearing to show Brown muttering several times “I got that white girl” as he walks up and down the train car. This audio, which has not been officially confirmed by the authorities, has been entirely absent from mainstream coverage of the incident.
The North Carolina chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has called for hate crimes charged to be brought against Brown for allegedly “commenting on her race and gender after brutally attacking her.”
RT was unable to independently verify the authenticity of the audio.
Is this the right’s George Floyd moment?
Zarutska’s murder has becoming a lightning rod on the right, even as it has been somewhat eclipsed by the killing of Charlie Kirk. The perception of double standards and selective concern about victims depending on identity has been a sore point for years, especially in light of what has been widely seen as the excesses of the post-George Floyd era.
The Zarutska killing is widely seen as unifying several issues that had been simmering for years: ineffective and lax policing, ideologically charged city prosecutors, a lack of media interest in crimes that undermine progressive narratives.
Some commentators believe this tragedy has started to loosen taboos about discussing the disparities in interracial crime A Fox News program in the wake of the Zarutska killing highlighted the disproportionate rates of black-on-white violent crime.
Simon Cottee, writing in Unherd, called the uproar over the Zarutska killing the “direct and wholly predictable consequence of years of institutionalised identity politics that vilified whites or whiteness in any form while simultaneously sacralising blacks or blackness.”
Meanwhile, Silicon Valley CEO Eoghan McCabe, founder of Intercom, announced he would provide $500,000 to artists willing to paint Zarutska’s image in highly visible urban areas. Elon Musk has offered a million. Merchandise paying honor to the young woman is already for sale.
Just a day before he himself was killed, Charlie Kirk prophetically posted a picture of a dying Zarutska, her questioning and terror-stricken eyes looking up her menacing killer, with the caption “America will never be the same.”
