Doomscrolling is very easy to do these days because there's so much bad news online and on social media and some of the posts can easily get you worked up emotionally but some posts tend to leave out details and sometimes add connections to politics.
This is a recent post I came across on Tumblr which was making reference to a tragic incident. A young lady who moved from Ukraine to the United States died on an American train seat.
Let me share the screenshot of the post from Tumblr.
The caption reads
She survived bombs in Ukraine, but died on an American train seat.
This was a Ukrainian refugee woman who was murdered in the United States. The caption also makes is clear that the murder case took place in a Blue City and the writer asked why the media won’t show it.
This story caught my attention and I decided to do deep research into it.
This is opinion based and I would have no problem if you disagree with the opinions. Free speech is very important in every society so if you disagree it's absolutely ok.
The woman’s name was Iryna Zarutska and she was 23 years old and originally from Ukraine. We know the situation of Ukrainians with all the war between them and Russia going on. She had to live through bombings and attacks during the war.
It's rather reasonable that she decided to leave her home country hoping to find at least a resemblance of safety in the United States. It didn't end the way she thought, because what she thought was greener pastures, ended in her tragic death.
On August 22, 2025, this young lady Iryna, was riding the Lynx Blue Line light rail in Charlotte, North Carolina.
She was just sitting on the train like any regular local or American that lives there would. Suddenly, a man she did not know, had never met before or who is not related to anyone she knows pulled out a knife and stabbed her. The murderer's name was Decarlos Brown Jr.
What the reports said was that this attack on her by the man was unprovoked, she did nothing to cause it.
Unfortunately, she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Decarlos Brown Jr, is 34 years old. This man actually has a history of mental health issues and that includes schizophrenia. I was not particularly surprised to find out that he also had past arrests.
According to authorities giving the information, he had been struggling for years with these mental health issues. After the attack, he was arrested and charged. The federal government charged him with committing a deadly act on a public transit system.
The answer is yes, and you can Google it. It was covered in media outlets like ABC News, People, AP News and other reports. So, just my opinion but when the post caption said the media is ignoring it, that is not completely true. I just think it might not have gotten as much traction as it deserved since this was really very tragic. It might not have been the biggest headline everywhere, but it was certainly reported and confirmed.
The post called Charlotte a blue city, and that basically means it usually votes for Democrats. The creator of the post also asked a question, why crime is not shown by the media. I think this is where this moves from facts around the story, into politics.
This is the fact, Iryna was tragically murdered on a train by a man with mental health issues.
The politics came in because the story was used as an argument about crime, Democrats, Republicans and of course media bias.
It is true that Charlotte is a Democratic led city but saying this crime happened only because it is a blue city is a bit of an exaggeration don't you think?
I will reemphasize that this is entirely opinion based.
Another fact, crimes like this have sadly happened in both blue and red cities. If we're being fair, the real cause here seem to be more related to mental health, public safety and how dangerous people are handled by the justice system.
Nobody would like to be murdered. Iryna’s story is even more heartbreaking to me knowing that she escaped bombs and war, only to die in a random act of violence in a place she thought was safe. No place is completely free of danger. A lot of refugees and immigrants come to the United States hoping for a better life and when something like this happens, it just proves the point that nowhere is a hundred percent safe.
More so, it shows just how important it is to improve safety on public transportation and give better support to people with mental health struggles because if the mind ain't right, wrong things are bound to happen and just like this story, innocent people can get hurt in the process.
Yes, there are opinions people carry about the lefts, the rights, the blue, the red, but reality is, this was a senseless attack and an innocent woman lost her life. That's why the government and communities should not downplay or trivialize mental health cases, it can get that bad.
