On August 22, 2025, there was a stabbing on the Charlotte light rail train. Involving Iryna Zarutska, and Decarlos Brown, 34 year old man. Decarlos has been charged with first-degree murder. He has a history of arrests, and suffered from mental health issues. The judge ordered that Decarlos will be evaluated for 60 days at a local hospital, meaning that they want to know if he is stable to trial or not. He will still get punishment for his murder, but without stable results he cannot be reliable to trial.
Iryna Zarutska entered the train car after a late shift. She had sat down, crossing her legs, looking straight at her phone. She had not said anything to the man behind her, nor looked at him for more than 2 seconds. Iryna had not done anything to this man, as we know of. In an article by CNN, journalists interviewed the Police Detective involved and got the following quote, “The train travels for approximately four and half minutes before the suspect pulls knife from his pocket, unfolds the knife, pauses, then stands up, and strikes at the victim three times,” (Holly Yan, Sara Smart, and others, August 22, 2025) The quote given helps show that Iryna hadn’t done anything to Decarlos, they were not fighting or any of the sort, he took an aggressive act against her, for what looks like no reason.
According to the article in question Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyes says, “While I do not know the specifics of the man’s medical record, what i have come to understand is that he was long struggled with mental health and appears to have suffered a crisis” (Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyes, August 22, 2025) She also states that the video of the “heartbreaking” attack was now public. People spread this video all over the internet. Given the circumstances this event has caused a lot of chaos in the political viewpoint of the city. There are a lot of sides to this story, but the main two are that the mayor does not want to let the truth out that they’re unsafe in the particular city. The other side of this argument is that the mayor addresses the mental health issues of the man as if given an excuse.
Going back from 2011 Decarlos has been in jail for 5 years for a robbery with a dangerous weapon. In the following article the source states, “ North Carolina state records list 14 cases for Brown, other than those related to the killing include arrests for minor offenses like speeding and shoplifting.”(Holly Yan, August 22, 2025) This evidence is explaining how this man has been arrested multiple times not only for murder, he has more than murder on his record, going off a limb this man has been unstable for a very long time, that’s a lot of trauma.
Given all of the circumstances Decarlos still murdered somebody no matter what anybody says about the mental health issues, though he is being evaluated until further notice, he will be punished for his actions. The mayor of Charlotte brings up a lot of points about how Decarlos had many health related issues, mostly to do with being mentally ill. If he was mentally ill was he evaluated in the past for this? When you think about 14 cases on this man, how do we know if he had any punishment or evaluation further after being in jail.
