Homicide of an Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte goes viral on the internet, but ignored by the media.

 

A screencap shows the moment before Iryna Zarutska was murdered by Decarlos Brown Jr. New York Post/Police handout. 

A homicide of a 23 year old Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte North Carolina has gone viral on the internet but has largely been ignored by Democrats and the Media. New York Post. Video shows the attacker, Decarlos Brown Jr., pulling out a pocket knife and stabbing Iryna Zarutska, which resulted in her death. Brown is a career criminal with 14 arrests and 12 convictions, including for assault and armed robbery. Media coverage has been scarce, with only local and conservative media really covering the story. The Mayor of Charlotte, Vi Lyles, even thanked people for not sharing the video.

Footage indicates that Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, has been charged in connection with the fatal stabbing of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light rail train on August 22, 2025. Authorities report that the attack appeared random, with Zarutska being… pic.twitter.com/0AG960hNuS

— S∆VI☆ (@SAVI3fi) September 7, 2025

Social media photo of Iryna Zarutska. New York Post/Instagram. 

My Comment:

This case has gone viral for pretty obvious reasons. The attacker was a career criminal that had no business being in public, especially since the video makes it seem like he's in the middle of some kind of mental break. It touches on crime, which is a huge topic in America today. And there was compelling and disturbing video of the attack (which thankfully cut the actual murder itself). All of those things ensure it was going to go viral.

The victim of course played a role in this too, though it's not always necessary, like the case with the truck driver making a u-turn on the freeway, which went viral despite there being no info about who he killed outside of the basic information (they were Hattian immigrants). Zarutska was a very attractive young woman with a compelling story about being a genuine refugee. She came to America to avoid warfare, but she might have been safer in Ukraine. 

Of course in a perfect world it wouldn't matter that she was a refugee or that she was an attractive person. It shouldn't matter at all who she was, just what happened to her, but it does partially explain why this case went viral. 

It also makes sense why the mainstream media is ignoring this story. Some of it might be fears of racism, though they had no problem in broadcasting hours and hours of footage of things like Michael Brown, George Floyd or Ahmaud Arbery. Racism is bad when it goes one way, apparently. 

But the real problem is that this plays into Republican narratives about crime. This is the kind of crime that would be preventable if the attacker, a man who obviously made a career out of crime and was also obviously undergoing a mental episode, had been in prison, or even an asylum. Instead, despite 12 convictions and 14 arrests, he was on the light rail system of Charlotte. 

Given that crime is being treated as a huge issue right now, and to be fair it is, the media is going to continue to downplay this case if they are allowed to do so. They don't want to do anything to justify Trump's actions in Washington DC, where he deployed the National Guard, and a high profile murder in a blue city (in a red state) would do that. 

I do have a lot of sympathy for the victim in this case. It seems like she was a fairly naive young woman, as I would not have sat anywhere near the attacker in this case. Given that she was from Ukraine, where things are safer in terms of crime, she might not have been aware that the man behind her was a threat. In the short video I saw before her attack, he gave me a serious case of bad vibes, and I would have done whatever I could have done to make sure that I either sat far away from him, or at the very least, in a position where I could keep an eye on him. Supposedly, she had only been in America for a few months, so it would not surprise me if she didn't realize the danger she was in. It really does say something about the crime in the United States that she would have unironically been safer in much of Ukraine, despite the active war there. 

As for the attacker, I have to say that it's just entirely predictable that he was able to do this. Our criminal justice system rarely deals with folks like this in any effective manor. We let folks who commit dozens of crimes keep doing it and it never made any sense as to why. Whenever folks do try and make an issue out of it, we just get attacked as racists, even though these kinds of interracial attacks are rare and black folks are way more likely to be victims of crime than non blacks. 

Regardless, I do think that this story will eventually get media coverage, outside of the conservative and local outlets that are covering it now. President Trump was informed of the case and said he would be looking into it. Given the obviously political advantage making the case go even more publicized, I am guessing it will get addressed soon.