Tragedy struck on a Charlotte light-rail train when a young Ukrainian refugee, just trying to make a new life in America, was senselessly killed in a brutal attack.
Fox News reported that on that fateful night of August 22, 2025, Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old who fled Ukraine’s war-torn landscape in 2022, was fatally stabbed in an unprovoked assault on the Lynx Blue Line, sparking outrage and renewed demands for safer public transit across the nation.
Surveillance footage paints a chilling picture: Zarutska, dressed in her pizzeria uniform, boarded the train just after 9:45 p.m., lost in her phone, unaware of the danger lurking behind her.
A man in a red hoodie, later identified as Decarlos Brown Jr., took a seat behind her and, within four minutes, pulled a folding knife and stabbed her three times, including a lethal strike to her throat.
Zarutska, who settled in Charlotte with her family to escape Russia’s aggression, was a graduate of Synergy College in Kyiv with a degree in Art and Restoration, dreaming of a future as a veterinary assistant.
Friends and family remember her as kind-hearted and creative, a woman who loved animals and brought light to everyone around her, making her loss even more devastating.
Zepeddie’s Pizza, where Zarutska worked, released a touching tribute: “We lost not only an incredible employee but a true friend.”
That sentiment hits hard, but it begs the question—how does a community heal when such random violence shatters lives, especially when the suspect, Brown, has a rap sheet longer than a CVS receipt, including robbery with a deadly weapon?
Brown, now charged with first-degree murder and held without bond, has a criminal history dating back over a decade, with convictions for larceny, breaking, and a six-year prison stint ending in 2020, followed by parole until 2021.
More recent charges against Brown, like communicating threats and misusing emergency services earlier in 2025, only fuel the frustration—why was someone with this record free to strike again on a public train?
President Donald Trump weighed in, calling the attacker a “madman” and offering condolences to Zarutska’s family, a reminder that evil exists and must be confronted head-on without the soft-on-crime policies that too often dominate progressive agendas.
Adding insult to injury, some dared to launch GoFundMe campaigns for Brown’s legal defense, a move social media users rightly blasted as a slap in the face to Zarutska’s memory.
GoFundMe swiftly shut down these fundraisers, citing their strict rules against supporting the defense of those charged with violent crimes, and refunded all donors within hours of the pages being flagged.
A spokesperson for the platform confirmed, “All fundraisers for Decarlos Brown Jr.’s legal defense have been removed,” a rare moment where corporate policy aligns with common sense over woke posturing.
While a verified fundraiser for Zarutska’s family remains active on the site, the broader issue looms—this horrific stabbing has reignited urgent calls for bolstering safety on public transportation, a concern that can’t be dismissed with empty promises or feel-good rhetoric.
