The suspect, 34-year-old Decarlos Brown, had a long rap sheet and now faces a state charge of first-degree murder and a federal charge of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system.
The federal charge comes with the possibility of the death penalty – a punishment President Donald Trump said he supports in this case. Prosecutors were still investigating, the US attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, Russ Ferguson, said Tuesday.
Democratic and Republican leaders have traded barbs over whom or what is to blame in this case — and for violence nationwide. The debate simmers against the backdrop of the Trump administration vowing to fight crime by deploying federal troops in predominantly Democratic cities.
Here’s what we know about the case polarizing opinion across the country.
Death penalty on the table as officials trade blame
While the attack occurred last month, the case reached a national audience last week with the release of surveillance video showing the killing.
In the wake of the killing, Charlotte’s Democratic mayor, Vi Lyles, initially released a statement that did not significantly address the victim and instead focused on offering empathy to the suspect and addressing homelessness and mental illness. A follow-up statement notably thanked the media outlets for not sharing video of the stabbing.
But under mounting criticism and after the video’s released by transit officials, the mayor this week released another statement that blamed the attack on “a tragic failure by the courts and magistrates” and announced increased security on the transit system.
“We need a bipartisan solution to address repeat offenders who do not face consequences for their actions and those who cannot get treatment for their mental illness and are allowed to be on the streets,” Lyles wrote.
On Wednesday morning, North Carolina Republicans, including from its 12th congressional district, spoke at a light rail station in Charlotte to criticize what they called the “soft on crime” politics in the Democratic-led city.
“Remember, Iryna Zarutska survived in Ukraine in a bomb shelter,” said Kyle Kirby, chair of the Mecklenburg County Republican Party. “In war-torn Ukraine, she made her way from that country to Charlotte, seeking refuge and promise, and she was given the edge of a knife.”
Local, state and national Republicans have accused Lyles and other Democrats who lead Charlotte of installing criminal justice policies at the expense of public safety. They said a man with Brown’s record shouldn’t have been on the streets at all.
The US Department of Transportation on Wednesday opened an investigation into the light rail transit system in Charlotte “to determine whether they are taking the necessary actions to keep riders and transit workers safe.”
In response, the Charlotte Area Transportation System said it “remains fully committed to working collaboratively with our local, state, and federal partners. These relationships are essential to our mission, and we value the trust and cooperation they represent as we continue working together to support our region’s transit system.”
The mayor said Wednesday the transportation system will add 30 more security personnel and will “deploy new security teams including bike patrols and urban terrain vehicles in the coming weeks.”
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he’s investigating the possibility of cutting federal funding from Charlotte’s light rail system.
“I can’t pull money today from their transit system,” Duffy told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Monday. “We start that investigation tomorrow, and I guarantee all your viewers that if I find what I think I’m going to find, they are not going to have your federal tax dollars going to their public transportation system.”
Suspect said victim ‘was reading my mind,’ his sister says
For years, loved ones struggled to find the defendant in the case the care he needed, family members said.
Brown had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and suffered hallucinations and paranoia, his sister Tracey Brown said. She said her brother told her multiple times the government had implanted a chip in him.
“I knew he was battling something, but I wanted to know what it was,” she said.
Brown was sometimes aggressive and attacked his sister in 2022, Tracey Brown told CNN. Though her brother was arrested that night, she decided to drop the charges out of concern for his mental health issues.
But it wasn’t Brown’s only run-in with the law. He has several convictions on his record, including for armed robbery, felony larceny and breaking and entering.
Brown spent more than five years behind bars for robbery with a dangerous weapon, state records show. After he was released in 2020, he “didn’t seem like himself” and struggled to hold conversations and jobs, his sister told CNN.
Their mother had tried to get him placed in a long-term facility, Tracey Brown told CNN, but her attempts failed because she wasn’t his guardian. She said she talked to her brother after his arrest and asked him why he attacked the woman on the train.
“Because she was reading my mind,” he told her.
His January release stokes controversy
Earlier this year, Brown was charged with misuse of 911, a class 1 misdemeanor, after he allegedly asked officers to investigate a “man-made” material that controlled when he ate, walked and talked, court documents state.
Officers told Brown “the issue was a medical issue,” and there was nothing more they could do. Brown became upset and called 911, the records state.
A condition of his release was his written promise to appear for his next hearing, according to court records. The White House said his release left him “free to slaughter an innocent woman just months later.”
CNN has reached out to Brown’s public defender, the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office and the magistrate judge who ordered his release for comment.
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