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A suspect has been charged over an unprovoked attack that killed a woman on a train in the United States last month.
Security footage recorded the moment Iryna Zarutska was suddenly stabbed from behind while riding a North Carolina light rail train on August 22.
The video began to circulateonline on September 5, inciting an outraged response to the crime.
Decarlos Brown jnr, 34, has now been arrested and charged with the murder, CNN reports.
His sister Tracey Brown saidher brother, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia, told her he had attacked Zarutska “because she was reading” his mind.
“I think that night he broke. I think he had a mental breakdown. I think he just snapped.”
She said Brown hadn’t seemed “like himself” since his five-year stint in prison for an armed robbery, becoming increasingly aggressive with his family.
Her mother, Michelle Dewitt, had previously attempted to have Brown put into a long-term care facility.
Dewitt told CNN her son was homeless at the time of the crime but had stayed at her home the night before.
Having dropped Brown back to a local shelter that morning, she couldn’t believe it when she heard he had been arrested for the murder.
“That was surely a mistake, that doesn’t seem like his character. He wouldn’t do anything like that. That’s just not who he is as an individual.”
Decarlos Brown jnr has been charged with murdering a woman on a train in North Carolina. Photo / Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office.
Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, was travelling home from her job at a pizza shop when Brown allegedly killed her.
The 23-year-old had been in the US since 2022 when she fled her war-torn homeland with family.
Attorney-General Pamela Bondi said the alleged murder was “a direct result of failed soft-on-crime policies that put criminals before innocent people”, the BBC reports.
She said Brown would “never see the light of day as a free man”.
Condemned by US President Donald Trump, the killing has become a touchpoint in US politics, with several legislators on the other side of the fence making statements on the incident, the New York Times reports.
Charlotte’s Democrat mayor Vi Lyles said the murder was a “tragic situation that sheds light on problems with society safety nets related to mental healthcare”.
But she has been criticised by Republicans, who say “progressive policies” are responsible for the crime – Representative Mark Harris describing the incident as “a microcosm of a national epidemic”.
