OPINION:
This month marks one year since Iryna Zarutska was brutally killed, in cold blood, on a North Carolina light rail system — shining a bright light on former Gov. Roy Cooper’s soft-on-crime policies.
Iryna was born in Ukraine and immigrated to North Carolina in 2022. Like so many others, she was chasing the American dream and had her whole life ahead of her.
But on Aug. 22, 2025, that dream was cut short. Iryna boarded the Charlotte Light Rail after finishing her shift at Zepeddie’s Pizzeria. Video shows that as she rode home, a man identified as convicted felon Decarlos Brown Jr. stood up and, without warning, allegedly violently stabbed Iryna while other passengers looked on.
Iryna died almost instantly. In the video, the panic and shock are plain on her face as her killer stands over her.
Mr. Brown is a monster who should never have been on that light rail car. He was a career criminal who had been arrested and released 14 times, most recently for armed robbery.
Why? Because Mr. Cooper had instituted a revolving door that uses cashless bail and pretrial release to put violent criminals back on the streets immediately after they are arrested.
In fact, Mr. Brown’s own mother urged that her son not be released. She said he was a danger to the community.
Yet despite Mr. Brown’s lengthy criminal rap sheet, Mr. Cooper included him on a list of 4,200 criminals to be released from North Carolina prisons in 2021.
This unprecedented prison release — part of Mr. Cooper’s campaign to “re-imagine” law enforcement — allowed more than 700 violent felons convicted of assault, assault with a deadly weapon, sexual assault, rape and murder back into North Carolina. Fifty-one were serving life sentences at the time.
Sadly, Iryna was not the only victim of Mr. Cooper’s move. More than 2,200 of the criminals on his list — including more than 600 for violent felonies and 99 for child pornography, sexual assault and rape charges — have been re-arrested. Mr. Brown is only one of the 25 people released who have since been arrested for murder.
There are now 25 more families in North Carolina who have to live with the pain and suffering of losing a loved one. These families will have an empty seat at the dinner table every Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter because Roy Cooper decided to let killers walk free.
As a father, I cannot imagine the pain and grief that Iryna’s family has been forced to endure following her murder. Iryna fled a war in her home country and came to North Carolina to find safety. But she found the opposite. Her future was stolen violently from her.
And for what? So that Roy Cooper could be seen as bowing down at the altar of wokeness.
Iryna’s family will never get to see Iryna flourish in her career, meet her husband or welcome children into the world. She should have been able to finish the higher education she started and she should have been afforded the opportunity to live the American dream she was promised.
The number-one duty of any government, whether at the local, state or federal level, is to keep its people safe. Unfortunately, Mr. Cooper was an abject failure at this most basic of tasks and it cost Iryna and 24 other North Carolinians their lives.
Following Iryna’s murder, I called on the North Carolina General Assembly to enact legislation to roll back Roy Cooper’s soft-on-crime policies. I am proud to have championed Iryna’s Law, which is now keeping violent criminals behind bars and helping to keep our communities safe.
I will always work to uphold the memory of Iryna and keep all of our children and communities safe from the criminals who wish to do us harm.
Iryna Zarutska should be alive today. We must have justice for horrific murders and hold her killer accountable to the fullest extent of the law.
We must also hold accountable the politicians who have put criminals like Decarlos Brown Jr. back in our communities. And we must work every day in Iryna’s honor to ensure that this kind of atrocity never happens again.
• Michael Whatley is running for the United States Senate in North Carolina.
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