The US Justice Department has filed charges against the suspect in the fatal stabbing of a Ukrainian refugee.
Decarlos Brown, a repeat offender with 14 prior arrests, stabbed 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on August 22, 2025, on Charlotte’s Lynx Blue Line.
The incident makes Brown eligible for the death penalty.
Since the incident, Brown has been in police custody on first-degree murder charges.
Attorney General Pamela Bondi declared that he aimed for the highest sentence and promised that Brown would not see the light of day as a free man.
In a news release, Bondi stated, “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. 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 release of a graphic video of the attack last Friday, September 5, has made people outraged.
Her family remembered Zarutska, a gifted and passionate artist, who had to flee the war in Ukraine together with her family in 2022, as having swiftly adapted to her new life in the United States.
The case has become a political hotspot. The Republican officials have expressed their criticisms of the soft-on-crime policies based on the fact that Brown has had a lengthy record of crime that includes previous convictions of robbery with dangerous weapons.
After the Charlotte transit system recorded a crime on one of its trains, U.S Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy threatened to withdraw federal funding to the system by saying, “If mayors can't keep their trains and buses safe, they don't deserve the taxpayers' money.”
Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, a Democrat, in turn responded by asserting the incident as, “a tragic failure by the courts and magistrates” and magistrates and promised to add police patrols to public transit.
Law enforcement has not provided a motive in the attack and there are no hate crime charges.