Cal Thomas | September 12, 2025
(The Washington Times) — She fled Ukraine for fear she might be killed in the war with Russia and came to America, where she thought she might be safe. She was wrong.
Iryna Zarutska, 23, was sitting alone on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, when a man got up from his seat behind her and stabbed her to death, a security camera showed. The accused killer, Decarlos Brown Jr., then walked up the aisle with blood dripping from the knife onto the floor of the train car.
The incident occurred Aug. 22 but did not catch the public’s attention until recently when the train company released a video of the attack.
Mr. Brown is a career criminal who belongs in prison. He had been identified in 14 previous cases in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, and sentenced to just six years in prison on various counts that included robbery with a dangerous weapon, larceny and breaking and entering. He has been charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing of Zarutska.
The mayor of Charlotte, Democrat Viola Lyles, called Zarutska’s death “a senseless and tragic loss” and then made a pitch to her legislature for money to hire more police officers. How about getting rid of no-cash bail, liberal judges and district attorneys who appear to care more for the criminal than they do innocent citizens? When we tolerate crime (look at the videos of looting at stores across the country while security guards watch and do nothing), the more of it we will get.
This is why, since President Trump deployed National Guard troops to the streets of the District of Columbia, “violent crime is down by almost half when compared to the same 19 days in 2024,” according to a CBS News analysis of crime data.
When people planning to commit criminal acts think they might get caught and punished, a tough-on-crime approach is one way to keep our streets safe. Keeping dangerous career criminals behind bars protects the public, which is one of the reasons we have prisons.
Ms. Lyles also called on the media not to show the video. No, that video should be repeatedly shown (and it has been on Fox News) and made part of Republican campaign commercials for the next two elections to demonstrate how Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies lead to such tragedies.
Speaking on religious freedom at the Museum of the Bible in the District, Mr. Trump said of the stabbing, along with undocumented immigrants with criminal records he has ordered deported: “These are evil people. We have to be able to handle that, and if we don’t handle that, we don’t have a country.” He is right.
Because the president spoke at the Museum of the Bible, someone should have given him this most appropriate verse from Ecclesiastes 8:11: “When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, people’s hearts are filled with schemes to do wrong.” Exactly!
To put it in a way even the secular mind can understand: When we tolerate evil and refuse to sufficiently stand against it with swift and certain punishment, we are bound to get more of it. When we stand against it, using not only the police, the courts and prisons but also teaching right from wrong in our homes and schools, as we once did, we are more likely to get better results.
Unfortunately, we have abandoned standards that were once taught and, yes, imposed on the young, and we are now reaping the whirlwind. The stabbing death of that girl on the train is just the latest example.
Cal Thomas is a nationally syndicated columnist; read more at CalThomas.com.
