The family of Iryna Zarutska is demanding justice for the murdered 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was ruthlessly and randomly slaughtered on a light-rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, last month.
Zarutska was stabbed to death allegedly by repeat offender Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, in a horrifying, caught-on-camera killing, which has left her family bereft and calling for a solution to systemic failures in the city’s public safety.
Iryna Zarutska’s family demanded justice for the murdered 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee in a statement released Tuesday.jamesfuneralhomelkn.com
Zarutska was stabbed to death allegedly by repeat offender Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, in a horrifying, caught-on-camera killing in Charlotte.Charlotte CATS
“We are heartbroken beyond words. Iryna came here to find peace and safety, and instead her life was stolen from her in the most horrific way,” a family spokesperson said in the statement issued by lawyers and obtained by WSOC-9.
“No family should have to go through this.”
Her relatives demanded that prosecutors lock up Brown and, further, address the “broader crisis in public safety and systemic failure.”
Brown’s half-brother Jeremiah similarly felt that the shocking stabbing might never have occurred if the North Carolina city had a functioning justice system.
“No family should have to go through this,” Zarutska’s heartbroken loved ones said of her death.Instagram/ Iryna Zarutska
“I think they could have pretty much prevented it then,” Jeremiah told The Post, referring to the lax terms set by a magistrate judge that allowed Decarlos to be released from jail in January.
Brown had previously been arrested 14 times and was known to suffer from schizophrenia, according to records.
Video allegedly shows the bloodthirsty maniac sitting on the train behind Zarutska for several minutes before he unsheathed a knife, stood up, and thrust the blade into her several times.
“He could do it again. They should still treat him for his mental issues but there are consequences for his actions,” Jeremiah, who shares a father with Decarlos, told The Post. “I think he should suffer the consequences.”
“I hope for the family impacted by the lady on the train,” he said. “I hope they get the support they need.”
Family of Zarutska is also asking the public and media to respect her dignity by not reposting the graphic footage of her ghastly murder.
Zarutska’s aunt, Valeria Haskell, said her niece’s family has spent the last three years living in “incredible pain” in their war-torn country of Ukraine, and now are grappling to cope with her murder.
“I feel like people can’t imagine what we are going through,” Haskell told the Daily Mail at her home in Huntersville — located about 15 miles from Charlotte. “I have no words.”
Haskell, Zarutska’s aunt through marriage, said the 23-year-old’s mother, Anna, is struggling the most over her daughter’s brutal murder.
She’s so distraught over losing Zarutska that she’s hunkered down at her home in Ukraine as she battles to come to terms with the death, her aunt said.
In addition to local charges, Brown has been hit by federal charges of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system. Those charges were issued by the Justice Department on Tuesday.
PAINFUL REVELATION: The Ring Iryna Zarutska’s Boyfriend Was Due to Give Her Next Month Was Hidden in His Desk Drawer. After the Tragedy, He Showed It to Her Parents and Whispered: “She Will Never Know About This”
In the quiet aftermath of Iryna Zarutska’s brutal murder on August 22, 2025, a heart-wrenching detail has emerged, etching an even deeper wound in the hearts of those who loved her. Stas, her 24-year-old boyfriend, had planned to propose to the 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee next month, during a long-dreamed-of road trip to the North Carolina coast. Tucked away in his desk drawer, hidden inside a small velvet box, was a delicate silver ring adorned with a single sapphire—a nod to Iryna’s love for the blue skies of her homeland. After her death, in a tear-soaked meeting with her parents, Anna and Stanislav, in their Huntersville home on September 17, 2025, Stas revealed the ring, his voice breaking as he whispered, “She will never know about this.” This painful revelation, shared exclusively with this outlet by a family confidant, underscores the depth of Iryna’s stolen future—a life of love and promise cut short on a Charlotte light rail train, leaving behind not just grief but unfulfilled dreams.
Iryna Zarutska’s story is one of resilience forged in the fires of war and hope kindled in a new land. Born on May 22, 2002, in Kyiv, Ukraine, she graduated from Synergy College with a degree in art and restoration, her talent for sketching portraits, sculpting, and designing eclectic clothing a beacon for those around her. “She shared her creativity generously, gifting family and friends with her artwork,” her obituary reads, capturing a spirit undimmed by the 2022 Russian invasion that forced her, her mother Anna, younger sister, and brother to flee to the United States. Sponsored by relatives in North Carolina, they settled in Huntersville, while her father, Stanislav, remained in Ukraine, bound by conscription laws. Iryna embraced her new life, studying English at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College, working at Zepeddie’s Pizzeria in Charlotte’s South End, and nurturing her dream of becoming a veterinary assistant. Her love for animals shone through in her care for neighbors’ pets, and her radiant smile won hearts. “The last three years were the best of her life,” her uncle Scott Haskell told reporters. “She fell in love with the American dream—and with Stas.”
Stas, a fellow Ukrainian émigré who arrived in the U.S. in 2020, met Iryna through a local Ukrainian community group in 2023. Their bond grew over shared dreams and late-night talks about their homeland. By 2025, living in separate apartments but inseparable, they planned a future together. Stas taught Iryna to drive, guiding her toward her first car, and promised a coastal adventure to celebrate her license. The ring, purchased with savings from his mechanic job, was meant to seal that promise. “It wasn’t extravagant, but it was perfect for her,” the confidant shared. “The sapphire matched her eyes, and he’d planned to propose at sunrise on the beach.” Stas kept the ring hidden in his desk, waiting for the perfect moment in mid-September—until tragedy struck.
On August 22, 2025, Iryna finished her shift at Zepeddie’s around 11:30 p.m., dressed in her khaki pants, dark shirt, and pizzeria hat, her blonde hair tucked away. She boarded the Lynx Blue Line at Scaleybark station, taking seat 14B. Surveillance footage captures her scrolling her phone, unaware of Decarlos Dejuan Brown Jr., a 34-year-old man with schizophrenia and a history of armed robbery, sitting behind her. At 11:50 p.m., Brown, driven by delusions that Iryna was “reading his mind,” stabbed her three times—twice in the face, once in the throat. She collapsed, blood pooling, as passengers scrambled. Brown fled but was arrested on the platform. Charged with first-degree murder and federal transit violence, his case has sparked outrage, with President Donald Trump demanding the death penalty and critics slamming “soft-on-crime” policies that repeatedly released him despite his record.
The ring’s discovery came days after Iryna’s funeral on August 27, which Stanislav, delayed by Ukrainian bureaucracy, watched via FaceTime before arriving in the U.S. on September 17—the day he saw the ring. Anna, clutching Iryna’s sunflower-embroidered sweater from her untouched suitcase, wept as Stas opened the velvet box. “He was shaking,” the confidant recalled. “He said, ‘She will never know about this,’ like he was confessing a secret too heavy to bear.” The moment, witnessed in the family’s modest living room, was a private devastation amid public mysteries: a final text from Iryna at 11:47 p.m., “I’m coming home,” sent from an industrial zone miles away; a train camera reflection showing a shadowy figure vanishing; a disabled Scaleybark station camera during her 12-minute “disappearance”; and her missing diary, with only its blank cover left after an intruder was caught on apartment CCTV. Was the ring a motive? Stas, cleared by police as a suspect, is adamant: “I loved her. I’d never hurt her.”
The family’s pain is compounded by these unresolved threads. Anna, speaking through attorney Lauren Newton, demands answers: “Who turned off that camera? Who took her diary? And now, this ring—she deserved that happiness.” Roommates Maria Kovalenko and Olga Petrova, who found the suitcase and empty diary cover, echo her grief: “She talked about Stas like he was her future,” Maria said. A GoFundMe, swelling past $60,000, funds private investigators probing the camera blackout and intruder footage. Vigils at Scaleybark station, marked by Ukrainian flags and notes like “Justice for Iryna,” draw hundreds. Her artwork, displayed at a September 22 memorial, includes a sketch of a couple under a starry sky, now seen as a haunting foreshadowing.
The case reverberates beyond Charlotte. Ukrainian officials mourn Iryna as a symbol of refugee vulnerability, while outlets like Al Jazeera critique the politicization of her death. Conservative voices, including City Journal, decry mental health and transit safety failures: “One ring, one life, stolen by systemic neglect.” X posts amplify conspiracies—some tie the ring to a jealousy-driven cover-up, though no evidence implicates Stas. Others, like @NCTruthSeeker, speculate the diary held secrets about a workplace stalker, perhaps linked to the camera sabotage. CMPD insists the blackout was a “technical fault,” but family-hired cybersecurity experts point to a deliberate VPN-routed access code.
As Brown’s trial looms, the ring remains a poignant relic of what could have been. Stas, now a shell of himself, keeps it in the velvet box, unable to part with it. “She was my home,” he posted on Instagram, alongside a photo of Iryna’s smile. The family, with Stanislav now present, buries her in Charlotte, her adopted home, rejecting repatriation. Anna clings to Iryna’s sketches, whispering, “She deserved that ring, that life.” The sapphire glints, untouched, a symbol of a love interrupted and a future denied. Amid the mysteries—texts, cameras, diaries—the ring anchors the deepest truth: Iryna’s light was extinguished before it could fully shine, leaving those she loved to mourn not just her death, but the life she was meant to live.
