US Attorney Doesn’t Rule Out Civil Rights Charges Against Suspected Light Rail Killer

United States Attorney Russ Ferguson of the Western District of North Carolina said Tuesday that the accused killer of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska could face additional charges.

Zarutska, who worked at an area pizza restaurant, was stabbed to death Aug. 22 on a Charlotte light rail train by DeCarlos Brown, a man with a lengthy criminal history. Ferguson said earlier in the press conference that his office moved “quite fast” compared to normal cases to charge Brown under 18 U.S.C. § 1992, which makes it a federal crime to use a dangerous weapon to cause death or injury on a mass transit system.

“We are looking at every available charge in this case,” Ferguson told reporters. “If we find facts that this was gender or race motivated, we will absolutely bring a federal civil rights charge in this case. If the facts don’t show that we won’t. We’re only going to bring a charge the facts support, the investigation is ongoing, we think we fairly have the facts for this charge, but we will continue to look and civil rights charges are certainly on the table.”

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“I got that white girl, I got that white girl,” Brown said in surveillance video released by the Charlotte transit authority Friday as other passengers went to the aid of Zarutska, as blood dripped from the knife onto the floor of the train car.

Ferguson defended the decision to charge Brown, who could face the death penalty, bristling when a reporter asked if the charge was “political grandstanding.”

“I don’t see how you would see this case as political grandstanding. And if you do, you should have the conversation we just had with Iryna’s family, because there’s nothing political about that,” Ferguson said. “This is a heinous crime and we are going to remedy it.”

“I don’t know what the politics is here. If this was a political grandstand there would be an opposite side to this,” he added emphatically. “Is the opposite side let’s allow murders on our light rail? Is the other side let’s let people out of state prison so they can commit other crimes? There’s no other side to this, there’s no politics to this, this is a pure and simple federal case.”

The incident went viral on social media after authorities released the video. Tesla CEO Elon Musk made multipleposts and also reposted other users on X who discussed the killing.

Conservatives on social media also commented about the absence of coverage from corporate media, contrasting that to how many corporate media outlets covered the death of Jordan Neely, a man with a lengthy arrest record who died after being restrained by 24-year-old Daniel Penny, a Marine Corps veteran, May 1, 2023.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg secured an indictment of Penny for involuntary manslaughter, but a jury acquitted Penny in December 2024.

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