It was August 22, 9:55 PM, in Charlotte, the most populous city in North Carolina, US. Iryna Zarutska, 23, a Ukrainian refugee who was coming from her shift at Zepeddie’s Pizza, boarded the Blue Line light rail. As the images showed, she had earbuds in, her uniform on, and a cap tilted just so. She sat by the aisle, relaxing after work and scrolling on her phone.
Right behind her, Decarlos Brown, 34, hoodie up, face half-hidden, waited.
Then it happened. Without any warning, the man flicked open a knife and stabbed her multiple times in the neck and chest. Iryna gasped, put her hands to her mouth, and then collapsed. Passengers froze, some of them recoiled, one walked off. But most did nothing. Two minutes later, the train stopped, and Brown walked off calmly. Iryna never got up again.
Iryna Zarutska’s life: fleeing Ukraine and chasing the American dream
Iryna’s life had been anything but easy. She fled Kyiv in 2022, escaping Putin’s bombs and chasing a dream of safety and independence, like us all. She studied art back home, spoke fluent English, and loved animals. Her big American dream was to be a veterinary assistant.
Until then, in Charlotte, she worked at a pizza shop to pay her bills. “We lost not only an incredible employee but a true friend,” wrote Zepeddie’s Pizza on social media.
“Iryna was always very helpful, very supportive and just had a heart of gold,” a family friend said, according to WCNC Charlotte. She simply dreamed of a normal life in the US and walked dogs in her spare time. And she was doing that with a big smile, one that lit up her entire neighbourhood. “She loved animals more than anything,” her friends remembered.
A life ended in the US by an unstable man
But in the end, fate was cruel for her. Iryna Zarutska became a cautionary tale of mental illness unchecked, systemic failure, and the randomness of danger in a city that prides itself on safety and modernity.
Brown was a walking disaster, an unstable man, according to his past: schizophrenia, paranoid delusions about “chips” controlling his body, a rap sheet stretching back to 2007. Fourteen criminal charges, multiple prison stints. His family reportedly begged for help.
But still, Decarlos Brown was on that train that evening, with a knife in hand, targeting someone nobody could have predicted. “It’s a failure of the system,” said one federal official. “Mental health and criminal justice, both failed. And she paid with her life.”
The brutal crime shocked not only the US, but the entire world. In a statement last week, President Donald Trump himself requested the death penalty for the killer.
A warning and a wake-up call
Iryna’s funeral in Huntersville was quiet, yet heavy with grief. Friends and neighbours left flowers, while Ukrainians draped in blue and yellow scarves said short prayers. Her coworkers lit candles at the pizza shop. “We lost a friend, a light. She’ll never be forgotten,” they said.
Iryna had escaped war in her country only to meet violence at a commuter train stop. She had survived bombs, crossed an ocean, and truly pursued the American dream. But her life and her dreams ended in senseless, cold-blooded brutality.
Her story isn’t just tragic, but it’s a warning and a wake-up call: for the systems that are meant to protect, for strangers who freeze when action is needed, and for a world that cannot ignore a promising life cut short. Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old, Ukrainian, dreamer, refugee, fell victim to a senseless, preventable murder.
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