The video, captured by a security camera in Charlotte, N.C., shows a 23-year-old woman named Iryna Zarutska sitting on a light-rail train one night in late August, dressed in the uniform of the pizza parlor where she worked.
She is looking at her phone when suddenly, a man sitting behind her stands up, gripping a knife in his raised right hand. Moments later, the police say, he stabbed and killed Ms. Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, in what appeared to be a random and unprovoked attack.
The police arrested Decarlos Brown Jr. soon after and charged him with first-degree murder. But the brutal killing did not capture widespread attention until the security footage was released on Friday, at which point it became an accelerant for conservative arguments about crime, race and the perceived failings of big-city justice systems and mainstream news outlets in the Trump era.
The outrage over the Charlotte killing is a part of a pattern in which President Trump and his allies highlight horrific crimes to bolster their case that the country is plagued by “American carnage,” as Mr. Trump put it in his first inaugural address, despite statistics that show crime is dropping. In Charlotte, overall crime was down by 8 percent in the first half of this year compared with the same period last year, according to the police, while violent crime was down by 25 percent.
On Saturday, Representative Mark Harris, a Republican who represents parts of Charlotte, called the attack “a microcosm of a national epidemic.” On Monday, the White House called Mr. Brown, who the authorities say is homeless and mentally ill, a “deranged monster” with a “lengthy rap sheet,” blaming the murder on local Democrats and accusing them of being soft on crime.
“It’s the culmination of North Carolina’s Democrat politicians, prosecutors and judges prioritizing woke agendas that fail to protect their citizens when they need them the most,” the White House statement said.
Last year, conservatives successfully used the killing of a nursing student in Georgia, Laken Riley, by a Venezuelan immigrant who had entered the country illegally to stoke fears about immigrant crime. While some on the left point to data showing that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, some conservatives argue that any crime committed by someone in the country illegally could have been prevented by strict immigration enforcement.
Mr. Trump repeatedly highlighted the killing of Ms. Riley in arguing that the border policies of his predecessor, Joseph R. Biden Jr., had made the country less safe.
Today, Mr. Trump’s critics fear that he will use the death of Ms. Zarutska to justify sending federal troops into American cities, as he has already done in Washington, despite statistics showing a downturn in violent crime nationwide.
“Trump’s MAGA allies are trying to use the tragic murder of a service worker in Charlotte, North Carolina, to justify its illegal occupation of U.S. cities,” the Rev. Dr. William Barber, the state’s most prominent African American civil rights leader, wrote in a text message.
Mr. Brown, 34, has a troubled history: He has been arrested 14 times over the last dozen years, according to the Sheriff’s Department in Mecklenberg County, home to Charlotte, including on charges of armed robbery, shoplifting and injury to personal property.
In August 2014, he was arrested after brandishing a handgun at a man and robbing him of $450, a cellphone and Honduran currency, court documents show. He pleaded guilty to robbery with a dangerous weapon and, with jail time served before the conviction taken into account, served the minimum sentence of six years and one month.
After his release in September 2020, Mr. Brown had the standard one year of post-release supervision. A spokesman for the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction declined to comment further on the case, citing confidential prison records.
Mr. Brown’s housing and mental state appear to have become increasingly unstable in recent months. In January, when the police conducted a welfare check on him, he told officers that someone had given him “a ‘man-made’ material that controlled when he ate, walked, talked,” according to court records. Mr. Brown grew upset when officers told him they could not do anything about it, and proceeded to call 911.
He was then charged with misuse of 911. Mr. Brown was released days later, with Magistrate Teresa Stokes agreeing to release him on the condition that he sign a written promise to appear at future hearings. On the paperwork, “nature and circumstances of offense” is checked as a fact that supported the release conditions.
Attempts to reach Judge Stokes were unsuccessful. Mr. Brown’s mother, Michelle Ann Dewitt, said in a brief interview on Monday that shortly after her son was released from prison in 2020, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and began acting “aggressive at home.” She added that she believed her son, whom she dropped off at a homeless shelter days before the murder, should not have been left out in the community after his arrest in January.
Now charged with first-degree murder, Mr. Brown is back in custody. A judge has ordered a mental acuity assessment, according to a redacted court document.
Efforts to reach Ms. Zarutska’s family were unsuccessful on Monday.
After the video’s release, a number of influential conservatives also accused major news outlets, including The New York Times, of ignoring the story because the crime was committed by a Black man against a white woman.
“The reason for the media silence is racial,” Dinesh D’Souza, the right-wing commentator, wrote in an online post on Sunday. “If the killer were white, this would get coverage. Of course if it were a white assailant murdering a Black victim, then it would be front-page headlines everywhere.”
The idea that mainstream news outlets downplay crimes committed by Black people has become more of a talking point in some conservative circles in recent years. The critique has emerged even as liberal critics of the news media have argued that crime coverage by American news outlets is distorted by anti-Black bias.
In North Carolina, as in other Southern states, newspapers in the Jim Crow era often egregiously exaggerated stories about Black criminality. Among other things, such stories served as a precursor to a white supremacist uprising in Wilmington, N.C., in 1898, in which at least 60 Black men were killed.
In its statement on Monday, the White House focused its wrath on North Carolina Democrats, calling out several of them by name for promoting what it called “woke agendas” instead of fighting crime. Its targets included former Gov. Roy Cooper, who is running for the U.S. Senate in a 2026 race that could help determine control of the upper chamber.
The White House noted that as governor, Mr. Cooper had established a “Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice” that had recommended diversion programs, eliminating cash bail for many misdemeanors and other reforms after the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Among other things, the White House also criticized the Charlotte City Council for an initiative to “reimagine” policing, and the Mecklenberg County government for hiring consultants to help address racial disparities in the justice system, such as Black and Hispanic people being overrepresented in the jail population compared with their share of the general population.
“The blood of this innocent woman can literally be seen dripping from the killer’s knife, and now her blood is on the hands of the Democrats who refuse to put bad people in jail, including Former Disgraced Governor and ‘Wannabe Senator’ Roy Cooper,” Mr. Trump posted on social media on Monday.
In a statement on Monday, Mr. Cooper’s office called the killing “a despicable act of evil” and defended his policies while in office. “Roy Cooper knows North Carolinians need to be safe in their communities; he spent his career prosecuting violent criminals and drug dealers, increasing the penalties for violence against law enforcement, and keeping thousands of criminals off the streets and behind bars,” the statement said.
Charlotte’s mayor, Vi Lyles, who is facing four other Democrats in a primary on Tuesday, has faced criticism from her opponents for what they described as an inadequate response to the murder and to safety concerns in Charlotte.
Days after the incident, Ms. Lyles released a statement offering condolences to Ms. Zarutska’s family and calling it “a tragic situation that sheds light on problems with society safety nets related to mental health care.” On Monday, in a letter published on social media, the mayor blamed “a tragic failure by the courts and magistrates” and pledged increased security around the city’s transit system.
In a phone interview on Monday, Pat McCrory, a Republican who served as mayor of Charlotte and later as the state’s governor, criticized the city’s current government, which is dominated by Democrats. Mr. McCrory said that local leaders had become too lax in its handling of “repeat criminals” and homelessness.
“Frankly, Charlotte has been implementing what I’d call progressive policies that are making us more like Atlanta and Portland than Charlotte,” he said.
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Eduardo Medina is a Times reporter covering the South. An Alabama native, he is now based in Durham, N.C.
Richard Fausset, a Times reporter based in Atlanta, writes about the American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice.
Emily Cochrane is a national reporter for The Times covering the American South, based in Nashville.
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