Leaders Badly Mishandled Charlotte Killing - John Hood

John Hood

September 10, 2025

Long before the release of a video graphically depicting Iryna Zarutska being stabbed to death on a Charlotte train, state and local leaders should have publicly mourned her death and expressed outrage at so appalling a crime. Now they’re paying the price.

Every homicide is a tragedy. Every innocent victim deserves our sympathy. But within hours of Zarutska’s slaying on August 22, it should have been obvious this case would create more than a one-day story.

For starters, Zarutska was a Ukrainian refugee. She’d fled a country subject to nightly attacks by a terrorist state targeting civilians — only to be stabbed to death on her way home from work, in the very country where she thought she’d be safe.

The man charged with her murder, Decarlos Brown Jr., was well known to local authorities. His long rap sheet included arrests for breaking and entering, burglary, larceny, and other crimes. He’d resisted arrest, blown off court appearances, spent time in prison. His history of mental illness and violence led his mother to have him committed to a psychiatric facility, but he’d been released after two weeks.

Furthermore, this incident was only the latest in a series of crimes committed within the city’s transit system. As WCNC-TV reported during its initial coverage of Zarutska’s slaying, another person had been assaulted earlier in the week on a Charlotte bus. As it happens, Mecklenburg County voters will in November approve or reject a one-cent hike in the local sales tax for transportation, mostly for transit. That is also general-election day for Charlotte’s municipal offices.

So far, I’ve described a war-refugee story, an urban-crime story, a mental-illness story, a transit story, and a local-elections story. All raised important questions that merited serious, sustained attention from our leaders. It wasn’t until two weeks later, however, that Gov. Josh Stein issued a statement — after a horrifying video of the crime was released and, entirely predictably, went viral.

“I am heartbroken for the family of Iryna Zarutska, who lost their loved one to this senseless act of violence, and I am appalled by the footage of her murder,” he said. “We need more cops on the beat to keep people safe.”

“That’s why my budget calls for more funding to hire more well-trained police officers. I call upon the legislature to pass my law enforcement recruitment and retention package to address vacancies in our state and local agencies so they can stop these horrific crimes and hold violent criminals accountable.”

Stein’s rhetorical approach was ill-advised, to say the least. Decarlos Brown has been arrested many times. In almost every case, it seems, the charges were dropped or plea-bargained away. His one stay in prison was insufficient. Attempts to deter him, treat him, or at least keep him far away from potential victims had failed miserably.

These were failures by prosecutors and courts, not the police. To most readers and viewers, then, blaming the incident on a lack of officers — and using it to pressure the legislature for more state funds for a traditionally local responsibility — came across as tone-deaf.

As for Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, her early statement describing the killing as a “tragic situation that sheds light on problems with society safety nets related to mental health care” earned her widespread condemnation. After the video was released, Lyles chided media outlets for broadcasting it while also decrying the “senseless and tragic loss” of Zarutska and saying she was praying for the victim’s family and friends.

I’m of the belief that leaders ought to offer their “thoughts and prayers” to victims of crime and natural disasters, so that part didn’t bother me. But I also agree with National Review’s Charlie Cooke, who wrote that Lyles’s initial statement made her sound “far more interested in the feelings of criminals than of the people they torment.”

After years of highly publicized, highly politicized homicides, public officials have had ample opportunity to learn how to handle them. This ain’t it.

Four Seconds on a Charlotte Train - Nicole Gelinas

September 10, 2025

The video of Decarlos Brown, Jr., slaughtering 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light-rail train on the night of August 22nd is sickening in many ways, but one aspect of the horror was how mundanely it unfolded. All of us who have had to contend with greater chaos and danger on mass-transit systems since 2020 have created useful fictions for ourselves: that wouldn’t happen to me, because I know not to sit near the crazy guy. I know to sit around other people. I know how to defend myself—punch someone, bite someone, scream. The video demolishes that fiction. We’ve also had to contend with a related fiction: that our transit systems remain safe. It’s time we stopped accepting random murders on our transit systems as normal. 

Zarutska, a refugee who arrived from Ukraine in 2022, gets on the train after her shift at a local pizza joint, just before 10 p.m. A slender woman, probably less than 100 pounds, she’s dressed in the khaki pants, black t-shirt, and black baseball cap of her employer, her blond hair tucked away in the hat. A few other people, at least four, are seated in her area of the train car; she knows, if she is calculating her public safety, that she is not alone. She finds a seat in the middle of the car, right in front of another passenger. She has no reason to avoid this young black man, Brown, 34, dressed in a hoodie, who, as she sits down, appears to be struggling to stay awake (he has been muttering and making jerky movements in the moments before she gets on the train). For more than four minutes after Zarutska takes her seat in front of Brown, he remains quiet. Even if she had looked behind her, or saw the man in her window’s reflection, she has no reason to fear him; he might appear fidgety, but lots of people fidget on the train. Zarutska scrolls through her phone, at one point nearly dropping it. She takes her glasses off at another point and tucks them into her shirt. Nothing out of the ordinary is going on here. Other passengers get on and off. The automated announcement tells people to “please stand clear” at a stop.

Then Brown stands up, grabs Zarutska by the neck, and repeatedly slits her throat. The entire action takes less than four seconds. Zarutska looks up at Brown in seeming confusion as he walks away from her. She cowers into a fetal position on the seat, looking down as the blood spatters out of her onto the floor. She falls onto the floor in front of the seat, and you think, mercifully, that she is unconscious. But she’s not: her slender hand reaches up as she tries to grab her phone, most likely to try to ask for help. She appears conscious or semi-conscious for nearly a full minute as she bleeds out. Moments later, several passengers gather around Zarutska on the floor to try to help her, and to use their own phones to call police. 

Zarutska had no chance of fighting back, and that would have been true if she were a man as well. What you also learn from watching this video is that you cannot depend on supposed safety in numbers to help you in an attack. The attack may happen too quickly for anyone to stop it, and the people around you may themselves be too confused, scared, or unsure of what to do to act instantly, even if doing so can save you.

Brown faces state and federal charges. But the goal is to stop crimes from happening before we have to punish murderers. 

Could Zarutska’s slaughter have been prevented? Brown should not have been on the train. He has spent most of his adult life under arrest or in prison, including for violent crimes. He also has a schizophrenia diagnosis, and has behaved so alarmingly, including assaulting his sister, that his own mother had him involuntarily committed, and then, when he was released, ejected from the family home. During a check on his health this past January, Brown called the police on the police. In that case, instead of acting on the obvious danger of a person with a propensity toward violence suffering from delusions, a Charlotte judge released him on his own recognizance. Brown belonged in a mental facility. 

Charlotte’s initial reaction to this horror was to hope nobody would notice. Instead of pledging a full review of where her city, county, or state failed, Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles, a Democrat, released an anodyne statement on the “tragic situation” and referring vaguely to “systems that should be in place.” She thanked media outlets for not running the gruesome video—as if it, and not the killing, were the problem. It wasn’t until the footage had chilled viewers around the nation that Lyles called the “murder” a “tragic failure by the courts and magistrates,” and said that we need a “bipartisan solution to address repeat offenders who do not face consequences for their actions and those who cannot get treatment for their mental illness.”

Much of the national press, though, prefers to spin Zarutska’s killing as a Republican plot to own the Democrats on crime. Axios, whose mission is to make its Beltway and business readers “smarter, faster,” had the smarmiest version: “Stabbing video fuels MAGA’S crime message,” it headlined its story. Axios then tried to pair “feelings” with a “reality check”: “Democrats have accurately pointed out that violent crime rates have been decreasing since pre-pandemic highs,” it informed its readers.

“Smarter” people will want to know the full story. The latest figures, through the end of 2024, show that the surge in national transit crime that began in 2020—mostly stranger-on-stranger unprovoked violence—hasn’t abated. From 2008 through 2019, an average of five people lost their lives to murder annually on American heavy-rail systems. Since 2020, the annual average has consistently been 15; last year’s 19 heavy-rail killings were the highest in at least 19 years. Between 2008 and 2019, the number of heavy-rail assaults nationwide averaged 315 annually; between 2020 and 2024, it averaged 728 annually. Across all U.S. transit systems, including light rail and bus, the annual pre-2020 average number of killings was 14; since 2020, it has been 40. The average annual number of assaults was once 836; now it is 1,687.

These numbers obscure the fact that the rise in transit murders can’t be separated from a harder-to-measure increase in transit disorder. Many disturbed individuals board a train or bus screaming and yelling at other passengers but, thankfully, don’t murder anyone. They do make people feel less safe, though.

The real answer to the question of whether transit violence is “low” is to see the video of a mute Iryna Zarutska watching herself start to bleed out. It is obviously not low enough. If we can prevent this horror—and we know that we can because we used to—shouldn’t we? If, as much media coverage seems to suggest, only Republicans care about transit violence, then some Democrats who watch the video will become Republicans.

Justice Department Charges Light Rail Attacker with Federal Crime

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – A federal criminal complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in Charlotte today, charging Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr., 34, with a federal crime in connection with the fatal attack of Iryna Zarutska on the city’s light rail system. Brown is charged with one count of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system.

“Iryna Zarutska was a young woman living the American dream — her horrific murder is a direct result of failed soft-on-crime policies that put criminals before innocent people,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “I have directed my attorneys to federally prosecute DeCarlos Brown Jr., a repeat violent offender with a history of violent crime, for murder. We will seek the maximum penalty for this unforgivable act of violence — he will never again see the light of day as a free man.”

“The brutal attack on Iryna Zarutska on the Charlotte Light Rail was a disgraceful act that should never happen in America,” said FBI Director Kash Patel. “The FBI jumped to assist in this investigation immediately to ensure justice is served and the perpetrator is never released from jail to kill again. I want to thank Attorney General Bondi for her pursuit of today’s federal charges, which are the first step toward delivering justice for Iryna and her family – as well as the millions of Americans who deserve to live in our great American cities free from being targeted by violent criminals."

According to allegations in the affidavit filed with the criminal complaint:

On August 22, 2025, at approximately 9:55 p.m., officers with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) responded to a call for service related to an assault that occurred on the Lynx Blue Line light rail in Charlotte. Callers indicated that a woman had been stabbed by a male. Responding officers located the victim inside the rail car. The victim, subsequently identified as Iryna Zarutska, had sustained fatal stab wounds. A pocketknife and other items were collected from the scene.

Investigators reviewed surveillance footage that showed the victim entering the light rail car and sitting down in the row in front of Brown. Approximately four minutes later, Brown pulled a knife from his pocket and unfolded it before striking the victim three times from behind. Following the attack, Brown walked away from the victim. Responding officers located Brown on the light rail platform and he was arrested.

“This brutal attack on an innocent woman simply trying to get to her destination is an attack on the American way of life,” said U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson. “Of course, crimes like this affect the victim the most—Iryna deserves justice, and we will bring justice to her and her family. But crimes like this also affect everyone who relies on mass transportation to get to and from work and go about their daily lives, and federal charges are necessary to protect the public and ensure confidence in our transportation systems.”

If convicted, Brown faces a maximum statutory sentence of life in prison or death. Ultimately, his sentence will be determined by the Court based on the advisory sentencing guidelines and other statutory factors.

The FBI is investigating the case with the assistance of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Odulio of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte is prosecuting the case.

The charges against Brown are allegations and he is presumed innocent unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. 

Updated September 9, 2025

 

Charlotte Murder Exposes Democrat Failures After Career Criminal Freed by Woke Policies

The White House

September 8, 2025

Horrifying video released on Friday shows the moment and innocent woman was brutally murdered on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina — a shocking act of evil that didn’t have to happen.

The deranged monster had been arrested again and again for violent crimes spanning more than a decade. Despite that lengthy rap sheet, mental health issues, and forfeiting bonds on three occasions, a Democrat judge released him back on the streets following his most recent arrest in January — free to slaughter an innocent woman just months later.

That has become the norm in Democrat-run cities, where Radical Left policies like “no cash bail” and “defund the police” put depraved career criminals back on the streets — free to continue raping, pillaging, and killing their way through our nation.

It’s the culmination of North Carolina’s Democrat politicians, prosecutors, and judges prioritizing woke agendas that fail to protect their citizens when they need them the most:

• In 2020, the Charlotte City Council launched an initiative to “reimagine“ policing, which included diverting 911 calls away from the police department.
• In 2020, then-Governor Roy Cooper established the “Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice” — co-chaired by then-Attorney General and current Governor Josh Stein — which recommended “reimagining public safety” to “promote diversion and other alternatives to arrest,” “deemphasize” some felony crimes, prioritize “restorative justice,” and “eliminate cash bail” for many crimes.
• Over the last seven years, Mecklenburg County Criminal Justice Services has received millions of dollars from a foundation that advocates for no-cash bail and decreasing jail populations to address “inequities.”
• Mecklenburg County hired ”equity and inclusion consultants” to address “racial disparities at all levels of the justice system” and its “Office of Equity and Inclusion” lists reducing “racial disparities and disproportionality within the criminal justice system” as among its goals.
• In 2020, Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings said “law enforcement, in general, is based on racism” and their department can “probably slow down” on “discretionary arrests.”
• In 2020, Democrat State Senator Mujtaba Mohammed, who represents Charlotte, declared “independence from rogue police.”

As President Trump said today: “There are evil people. We have to be able to handle that. If we don’t handle that, we don’t have a country.”

Vi Lyles 3rd Attempt

In an undated letter Charlotte's Mayor Vi Lyle attempts for a 3rd time to address the senseless violent murder of 23 year old Iryna Zarutska.

Her words are decidedly different yet still she can't read the room. 

Our city is hurt, our lives forever altered, our faith in our public officials destroyed.  Because her first response was from her stone cold heart and now nothing she will say can remove that stain and our understanding of her true feelings.

Her first callous woke response with all the liberal cashless bail blame the victim defund the police talking points was universally condemned.

The second revision met immediate condemnation by the President, Sectary of Transportation, and the US Attorney General. 

The 3rd revision is no less troubled and obviously more disingenuous than her 1st and 2nd attempts.

I will let you decide.

Every Case Dismissed

 Swake LaJuan Michael McCorey Photo Courtesy of MCSO

Swake McCorey was arrested again on Saturday night, September 7, 2025 and charged with:

FLEE/ELUDE ARREST W/MV (F)

DWLR NOT IMPAIRED REV

RECKLESS DRIVING TO ENDANGER

HIT/RUN LEAVE SCENE PROP DAM

RESISTING PUBLIC OFFICER

FAIL TO HEED LIGHT OR SIREN

SPEEDING 130/55

FAIL TO BURN HEADLAMPS

IMPROPER PASSING ON RIGHT

POSSESS STOLEN MOTOR VEHICLE

PWISD MARIJUANA

FLEE/ELUDE ARREST W/MV (F)

CARRYING CONCEALED GUN (F)

Needless to say this is not his first rodeo 

But every single prior arrest has resulted in zero convictions. 

Every one of his prior criminal cases that has made it into a courtroom was dismissed by the Mecklenburg County DA. 

His bail has often been unsecured, never more than $1,000.00 and only once did he spend more than a few hours in jail.

That changed Saturday night when his bail was denied. He'll have a court hearing at 10:00 am on Monday. If he is granted bail I'd be surprised if it is more a $5,000.00.

Cedar Posts Update:

This morning Liberal Judge Fritz Mercer set this career criminal's bail at only $3,500.00 but did order electronic monitoring and a 6 to 6 curfew. 

Cedar Posts Update:

The clerk of court finally updated the bond set by Judge Mercer.

5000 on the expired tag, weapon and weed

10000 on the stolen car, weapon, flee and elude

5000 on the weed, resisting, flee and elude and reckless driving 

That's $20,0000 of which about $860 should get him out the door. Maybe a little more since he has a habit of failing to appear.

Where is he now? Find out right here.

Wheels of Justice

The wheels of Justice in Mecklenburg County are seldom turning. 

The full quote is often phrased as  "The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine". 

This proverb is supposed to mean that while the legal process can be lengthy, it will eventually produce the absolutely correct and thorough outcome. 

For Kendall Crank died on March 28, 2019 after she was caught in the crossfire of a shootout on 28th Street near North Tryon Street in Charlotte nothing could be further from the truth.

The following day, CMPD would charge 3 thugs; Adonis Smith, 17, Marquis Smith 24 and 22 year old Tychicus Dobie with 1st degree murder.

But it would take six years before the first case would go to trial.

March of this year the case against Adonis Smith did just that after six years.

Adonis Smith Photo Courtesy of MCSO

Unfortunately the jury selected to hear the case had the educational equivalent of squirrels and the state's case was a disaster. The judge ruled in favor of the defense on nearly every motion and his lengthy instructions to the jury seemed to reach new levels of direction from the bench. In the end the jury like a squirrel in the road could not make up its mind.

On May 8, 2025 Judge Matthew Osman declared a mistrial, and released Smith on a 10 thousand dollar secured bail while rejecting the state's request to for electronic monitoring.

Smith was released from jail on May 9, 2025 at 9:39 PM six years and two months after he was arrested for the murder of Kendall Crank. He remains free on bail awaiting a decision as to a retrial.

Then last month the other two men accused of killing Kendall Crank in 2019 pleaded guilty to reduced charges.

The remaining two thugs would wait another two months before they made their appearances before a judge back in August.

With the disaster of Smith's trial the Mecklenburg County DA offered defendants, Tychicus Dobie and Marquis Smitha a sweet plea deal. 

Dobie and Smith Photo Courtesy MCSO

Dobie pleaded guilty to Voluntary Manslaughter and Discharging a Weapon into an Occupied Vehicle in Operation. Dobie also pleaded guilty to two counts of possession of a weapon by a prisoner, although those charges did not stem from Crank’s murder.

Dobie was released from the Mecklenburg County Detention Center on August 12, 2025 having been given credit for time served.

Marquis Smith pleaded guilty to Accessory After the Fact of Voluntary Manslaughter and Possession of a Firearm by a Felon and was released with credit for time served on August 6, 2025.

The men’s pleas come more than six years after 27-year-old Kendal Crank was murdered.

Crank was on her way to classes at the UNC School of Nursing when a shootout broke out on 28th Street near North Tryon Street, not far outside Uptown. She was killed by a single bullet.

The case against Adonis Smith is still pending it remains to active for the time being and he remains free on bond.

At this point the Mecklenburg DA has only 3 options:

Retry the case, which could take months or years of preparation.

Attempt to negotiate a plea deal with Smith’s attorneys.

Drop the charges.

The biggest obstacle may be that the murder weapon has never been located and that makes tying the gun, the bullet and the shooter to Crank's death conclusively a bridge too far. 

Additionally now that the two co-defendants have been convicted, and sentenced to time served, Spencer Merriweather has little choice but to dismiss the charges against Adonis Smith.