DOJ pursuing death penalty for alleged train stabber with mile-long rap sheet, Bondi says

Federal prosecutors will seek the death penalty against the accused murderer of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutka if he is convicted in North Carolina, Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday.

Decarlos Brown Jr., a homeless man with lengthy criminal and mental health histories, faces a federal grand jury indictment charging him with murder on a public transportation system over Zarutska’s stabbing death on a Charlotte train in August. Bondi highlighted Brown’s numerous prior arrests before the killing during an interview on Fox News’ “Jesse Watters Primetime.”

Yesterday, a grand jury in North Carolina returned an indictment for DeCarlos Brown Jr., who viciously killed Iryna Zarutska on the light rail in Charlotte.

He was walking free because of soft-on-crime policies.

Our prosecutors will not rest until we get justice for Iryna.

— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) October 23, 2025

“I plan on signing a warrant to seek the death penalty in that case,” Bondi told host Jesse Watters. “He had been arrested 14 times, Jesse, as you know, and should have been in jail when he murdered that beautiful, innocent young woman.”

Brown’s attorney in the federal case, Joshua Kendrick, did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment. A judge appointed Kendrick as Brown’s attorney on Sept. 25 due to his experience with capital punishment cases, court documents show.

A public transit passenger — whom police identified as Brown — approached Zarutska from behind while she sat alone on the train and stabbed her three times with a knife in a seemingly random act of bloodshed in August, video footage shows. The Ukrainian immigrant then bled to death on the floor of the train while bystanders tended to her wounds.

“I got that white girl. I got that white girl,” the stabber said on the train after the attack, according to the footage.

The Trump administration has blamed Zarutska’s death on “soft-on-crime policies” that allowed Brown to continue roaming the streets.

Brown was released from jail on a “written promise to appear” in January after he was charged with misusing the 911 system to tell police that a substance was controlling his bodily movements. He previously had a schizophrenia diagnosis.

The defendant also faces charges in Zarutska’s murder at the state level that make him eligible for the death penalty, but local prosecutors have not stated whether they will pursue it, WBTV reported.

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