North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein (D) was criticized for calling for “more cops” in response to a stabbing on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, that left a Ukrainian refugee dead.
In a post on X, Stein expressed that he is “heartbroken” for 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska’s family, after recently released video footage allegedly showed the suspect, Decarlos Brown Jr., stabbing her near the throat on August 22, 2025.
“I am heartbroken for the family of Iryna Zarutska, who lost their loved one to this senseless act of violence, and I am appalled by the footage of her murder,” Stein said. “We need more cops on the beat to keep people safe. That’s why my budget calls for more funding to hire more well-trained police officers.”
In response to Stein’s post, Rep. Tim Moore (R-NC) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) were among the many people who pointed out that Brown had been arrested and released roughly 14 times, adding that the “problem isn’t the number of police,” but rather the “soft-on-crime” judges who keep releasing career criminals.
“Are you serious? Our law enforcement officers arrested this guy over and over again,” Moore wrote in a post. “This is a matter of having soft-on-crime, leftist judges and magistrates turning these career criminals loose.”
“If Governor Stein really cared, he would call to revoke Roy Cooper’s ‘Task Force for Racial Equity’ that kept Zarutska’s killer on the streets,” Cotton wrote in a post. “Even after 14 arrests. The problem isn’t the number of police. It’s Roy Cooper’s pro-criminal policies.”
“What’s more police officers going to do when your legal system caught and released the man 14x?” one person wrote.
“When he was Attorney General, Governor Stein advocated for soft-on-crime policies under the guise of ‘racial equity,’” Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) wrote in a post. “But the justice system must be blind to race, and prosecutors must hold criminals accountable.”
“Wrong,” North Carolina state Rep. John Bell (R) wrote. “He was arrested 14 times. Don’t blame this on Police. They did their job, but Democrat soft-on-crime policies allowed him to walk free and murder Iryna Zarutska. A shameful and preventable tragedy!”
Breitbart News reported that Brown was arrested and charged with first-degree murder after Zarutska was stabbed in the throat several times while riding the Charlotte light rail in August.
Video footage of the incident, which WBTV News obtained, showed Zarutska boarding the train car and sitting down in front of Brown. Brown appears to take out a pocket knife and stab “Zarutska three times in the throat area.”
Brown is then seen walking through the train car, and passengers can be seen starting “to notice” that blood is dripping from Brown:
The first clip shows the stabbing suspect, identified as Brown, sitting on the rail car before Zarutska boards the light rail. Brown can be seen moving around in his seat and appears to be emotional.
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About one minute and 30 seconds into the video, Brown can be seen taking out a pocket knife, unfolding it, standing up, and gearing up to attack Zarutska. WBTV froze that clip moments before Zarutska is stabbed.
In the full video, WBTV observed the attacker swing his arm and stab Zarutska three times in the throat area before walking away. Zarutska looked visibly shocked by the attack, falling to the floor shortly after.
The New York Post reported that court records viewed by the outlet show that Brown “has more than a dozen convictions dating back to 2014,” and that Brown “served five years for a 2014 armed robbery and was released in September 2020.”
In a post on X, former Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Whatley, who is running for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, pointed out that in 2020, former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) “tasked a group of extreme leftists with advising him on implementing his executive order, which introduced weak-on-crime policies.”
“In 2020, my Democrat opponent, Roy Cooper, tasked a group of extreme leftists with advising him on implementing his executive order, which introduced weak-on-crime policies to North Carolina’s justice system regarding ‘pretrial release, fees, and fines,’” Whatley wrote in his post.
In a post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump attacked Democrats, noting that Zarutska’s “blood is on the hands” of Democrats like Cooper, “who refuse to put bad people in jail.”
“I have seen the horrific video of a beautiful, young Ukrainian refugee, who came to America to escape the vicious War in Ukraine, and was innocently riding the Metro in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she was brutally ambushed by a mentally deranged lunatic,” Trump said. “The perpetrator was a well known career criminal, who had been previously arrested and released on CASHLESS BAIL in January, a total of 14 TIMES.”
Trump continued: “The blood of this innocent woman can literally be seen dripping from the killer’s knife, and now her blood is on the hands of the Democrats who refuse to put bad people in jail, including Former Disgraced Governor and ‘Wannabe Senator’ Roy Cooper.”
