The man accused of killing Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte train last month has claimed he was under government control when he carried out the fatal stabbing.
Decarlos Brown, 34, was arrested after surveillance footage showed him lunging at 23-year-old Zarutska from behind as she sat scrolling on her phone on 22 August. She died from multiple stab wounds, sparking grief and outrage across Charlotte.
In a phone call recorded by his sister Tracey, Brown alleged that the government had implanted “materials” in his brain which were controlling his actions at the time of the attack. “I hurt my hand, stabbing her. I don’t even know the lady. I never said not one word to the lady at all,” Brown said, adding that “whoever was working the materials lashed out on her.”
Brown further told his sister he believed Zarutska was “reading his mind.” In their exchange, Tracey pressed him on why he attacked her, to which he replied: “She’s from the Ukraine, she’s from Russia, and they had a war going on against the United States … Whoever was working the materials, they lashed out on her.”
Tracey Brown, who lives in Charlotte, said her brother should never have been on the streets given his severe mental illness. She recounted years of his attempts to seek medical help, including multiple calls to 911 in which he told police he was being controlled by microchips.
One of those incidents, on 19 January this year, saw Brown arrested and charged with misuse of the 911 system after officers dismissed his claims as a medical issue. Days later, a magistrate judge granted him cashless bail and ordered a psychiatric assessment, but Tracey said the process was delayed for 18 months.
She said her brother’s mental health deteriorated sharply following a six-year prison sentence for armed robbery, after which he appeared “not in our reality anymore.”
“An innocent woman is dead. He was asking and crying for help, and no one heard him,” Tracey said. “The state failed him, and it failed society.”
Brown remains in Mecklenburg County Jail, where he has been charged with murder. His trial date has not yet been set.