US President Donald Trump demanded the death penalty for the murderer of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska. In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that ‘the ANIMAL who so violently killed’ Zarutska should be given a ‘quick’ trial, and only awarded the ‘DEATH PENALTY’. ‘There can be no other option,’ Trump concluded.
Iryna Zarutska was brutally murdered on 22 August on a late-night train in Charlotte, North Carolina, by the 35-year-old career criminal Decarlos Brown Jr, who had been arrested 14 times before killing the young woman. Her stabbing sparked outrage, especially after video footage was released and local Democrats and mainstream media did not even bother to report on it. It is even more outrageous if we compare the murder with that of George Floyd back in 2020, which sparked months of far-left riots in major cities in the US.
However, since then, influential figures on the right are making sure everybody has heard of the young Ukrainian woman. On 10 September, Intercom CEO and founder Eoghan McCabe launched a campaign, offering ‘$500k in $10k grants to paint murals of the face of Iryna Zarutska in prominent US city locations’. The initiative was quickly picked up by US billionaire and former DOGE secretary Elon Musk, who joined by proposing $1M for the same cause. Since then, X has been full of photos of paintings on buildings depicting Zarutska.
Meanwhile, another campaign has started that could lead to real law-making. Zarutska’s murder is another case of judicial negligence: her killer was released 14 times before murdering the Ukrainian woman. That is hardly a unique incident: Democrats’ soft-crime policies resulted in progressive judges releasing dangerous criminals back into society day by day. After the murder, Republican lawmakers demanded accountability for the judge who released Brown earlier in the year on a written promise to appear in court. Meanwhile, there is also a push for systematic change to prevent judges from similar negligence, also led by local and state Republicans.
After Trump’s post on Wednesday, US Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the Justice Department may seek the death penalty for Iryna Zarutska’s killer. Speaking to reporters, Bondi shared that Zarutska’s alleged murderer, Decarlos Brown Jr, has been arrested and that he is being charged federally. ‘We have arrested him. We are charging him federally because it was a murder on mass transit,’ Bondi said. ‘This young woman died a horrific, horrific death, as we all saw, captured on video,’ she went on, adding, ‘it was horrible.’ ‘The steps are, we charge, then we indict. Then, legally, we make the decision whether or not to seek the death penalty. That is certainly on the table once he is indicted for this horrific crime,’ Bondi explained.
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