After immense public backlash over her comments sympathizing with the man who allegedly stabbed 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a train, Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles released another mealy-mouthed statement Monday calling the crime a “tragic failure by the courts.” But nowhere in the page-long statement did she take responsibility for her previous comments, in which she thanked the media for burying the story and called for “compassion” for violent offenders.
Disturbing video footage shows Zarutska boarding a light-rail car in Charlotte on Aug. 22. Zarutska sits in front of another passenger who, after a few moments of staring menacingly, pulls out a knife and “suddenly stabs Zarutska multiple times,” according to local outlet WCNC Charlotte. The suspected killer is DeCarlos Brown Jr., who has been charged with first-degree murder.
Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles released a statement Monday, calling the deadly stabbing “a tragic failure by the courts and magistrates.”
“Our police officers arrest people only to have them quickly released, which undermines our ability to protect our community and ensure safety,” Lyles said in a letter posted on X, calling for a “bipartisan solution” for “those who cannot get treatment for their mental illness and are allowed to be on the streets” and repeat offenders. She also discussed “ongoing work to address safety and security on our public transport system.”
Video footage of the attack was released Friday, and the media continue to downplay the incident. Lyles’ Monday letter came after she released another statement on Saturday thanking “our media partners” for not “repost[ing] or shar[ing] the footage out of respect for Iryna’s family.”
The Monday statement does not acknowledge this, however, or comments Lyles released in late August to reporter Joe Bruno, in which she painted the killer as the real victim.
After a single, throwaway line expressing “thoughts and prayers” for Zarutska — who Lyles apparently refused to name — the August statement went into a soliloquy essentially dismissing the killer’s actions not as those of a career criminal, but as someone mentally ill who “suffered a crisis.”
“We must look at the entire situation,” Lyles said, according to Bruno. “While I do not know the specifics of the man’s medical record, what I have come to understand is that he has long struggled with mental health and appears to have suffered a crisis.”
You know who actually suffered a crisis? Zarutska. She suffered a violent, preventable death, allegedly at the hands of a man who had a long criminal history. Jail records show Brown was previously convicted of armed robbery, breaking and entering, shoplifting, and felony larceny, according to local outlet WBTV. He was also arrested at least 14 times.
“[T]ragic incidents like these should force us to look at what we are doing across our community to address root causes,” the statement continued. “We will never arrest our way out [of] issues such [as] homelessness and mental health.”
Arresting violent criminals does prevent more crime. Lyles herself seems to admit this in her most recent statement. If arrests don’t work, then why was Brown arrested and charged? Of course, it’s to prevent another murder.
Lyles also made sure to emphasize in her statement to Bruno that she was not “villainizing those who struggle with their mental health or those who are unhoused” before she went on to say that mental health is a “disease” that “needs to be treated with the same compassion, diligence and commitment as cancer or heart disease.”
The statement closed after suggesting that the real victim wasn’t Zarutska, but “unhoused” individuals who “are more frequently the victim of crimes and not the perpetrators.”
Although Lyles’ subsequent Saturday statement expressed more remorse for Zarutska and her family, she was apparently still “thinking hard about what safety really looks like in our city” more than two weeks after the attack.
Lyles’ initial mentality and refusal to take responsibility for her comments are what fuel more crime: excusing the guilty, minimizing the acts, and spinning the preventable tragedy as just a social justice problem. It took Lyles several days (and pressure from the backlash) to barely acknowledge that some people have proved themselves incapable of being functioning members in society and must be removed from the streets.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist. Brianna graduated from Fordham University with a degree in International Political Economy. Her work has been featured on Newsmax, Fox News, Fox Business and RealClearPolitics. Follow Brianna on X: @briannalyman2
