North Carolina man faces federal charge in fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee

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By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday charged a man with stabbing a Ukrainian refugee to death last month on a North Carolina train, a case that in recent days has served as a rallying cry for President Donald Trump’s broadening crime crackdown.

Decarlos Brown, 34, now faces a federal charge of committing a murder on a mass transportation system, after he was already arrested on a state charge of first-degree murder. While both the state and federal charges carry possible death sentences, the state of North Carolina has not executed an inmate since 2006, while the federal government has carried out executions as recently as 2021. 

Trump and other conservatives have asserted that the murder of Iryna Zarutska, 23, was the result of Democratic policies that are too lenient on criminals, as the president escalates his threats to deploy the National Guard to the streets of Chicago and other Democratic-led cities.

The August 22 killing drew national attention on Friday after a video showing the stabbing was released, prompting conservatives to circulate the footage as evidence that Democratic cities are overrun with crime.

“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,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “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.”

Brown had a long history of arrests and pleaded guilty to armed robbery in 2014, serving six years in prison.

He appears to have suffered from mental illness. Earlier this year, he was charged with misusing 911 after he told officers someone had put a “man-made” material inside his body to control him, according to court records. Charged with a misdemeanor rather than a more serious felony, he was released without bail by a magistrate judge.

In a statement, Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, a Democrat, called the case a “tragic failure by the courts and magistrates” and called for bipartisan legislation to make sure repeat offenders and those who need treatment for mental illness are kept off the streets.

“Our police officers arrest people only to have them quickly released, which undermines our ability to protect our community and ensure safety,” she said.    

North Carolina Governor Josh Stein, a Democrat, said the state needed to hire more police to keep people safe and called on lawmakers to pass a proposed budget package to do so.

After Brown’s arrest for murder, a judge ordered him held for at least 60 days in a hospital to undergo psychiatric evaluation, court records show. His court-appointed lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

Brown’s mother told local television that she previously had him involuntarily committed and that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Zarutska had immigrated to the United States in 2022 with her family, seeking safety from Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to an obituary.

Trump has a history of amplifying gruesome crimes to advance his policy agenda. During his presidential campaign last year, he repeatedly cited the killing of a student, Laken Riley, by an immigrant in the country illegally to argue that lax border enforcement was fueling a wave of crime, despite studies showing that immigrants do not commit crimes more frequently than native-born Americans.

The president has been threatening for weeks to send National Guard troops into Chicago to crack down on crime. Last month, he deployed National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., to combat what he claimed is a rash of violence.

Crime statistics, however, show violent crime has been on the decline in both cities, though their murder rates remain higher than some other big cities such as New York and Los Angeles.

Charlotte’s violent crime was down 25% in the first half of 2024, according to police data.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax in Princeton, New JerseyAdditional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington and Brad Brooks; Editing by Matthew Lewis)