Nothing captures the dangerous idiocy of Democrats better than the statement from Charlotte, North Carolina Mayor Vi Lyles following the unspeakably savage murder of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee and now a victim of the violence that Democrat values, beliefs, and policies have fomented.
Lyles submitted a prepared statement to a news outlet that sought to turn public horror and anger about a justice system that no longer metes out justice into sympathy for the mentally ill and “unhoused”:
This is a tragic situation that sheds light on problems with society safety nets related to mental healthcare and the systems that should be in place. As we come to understand what happened and why, we must look at the entire situation. While I do not know the specifics of the man’s medical record, what I have come to understand is that he has long struggled with mental health and appears to have suffered a crisis. This was the unfortunate and tragic outcome.
Describing Ms. Zarutska’s murder as “unfortunate” is obscenely reductive. Her slaughter was horrifying.
And while her death is, indeed, tragic, it was also avoidable. Framing the actions of recidivist violent criminal Decarlos Brown Jr. as an unfortunate mental health crisis that Brown “suffered” strips him of culpability and his actions of their evil.
Lyles continued:
[T]ragic incidents like these should force us to look at what we are doing across our community to address root causes. We will never arrest our way out issues such homelessness and mental health.
“Arrest our way out of” homelessness and mental illness? What rhetorical gibberish—gibberish that will rub salt in the deep wounds of Ms. Zarutska’s parents if they have the misfortune to hear them.
Who has ever made the claim that arrests will solve homelessness or mental illness? What arrests and incarcerations do is prevent criminal acts, thereby making train rides safe for law-abiding citizens, refugees, and visitors.
Do the “root causes” of these “tragic incidents” include leftist beliefs that normalize sex outside of marriage, out-of-wedlock births, and fatherless families which lead boys to seek structure and authority figures in gangs?
Do the root causes include public schools that foment racism and cultivate aggrievement.
Do the root causes include the eradication of involuntary institutionalization, defunding the police, and cashless bail?
Maybe leftist efforts to destigmatize criminality haven’t made life better for society after all. Maybe replacing the word “offender” with “justice-impacted individual” as Illinois has done harms victims of justice-impacted individuals.
I suspect Lyles prefers not to look at any of these potential root causes.
Lyles—or her writers—fear saying anything even kinda, sorta, maybe touching on the yuckiness of slaughtering people (especially when the slaughterer is black and the victim is white):
I want to be clear that I am not villainizing those who struggle with their mental health or those who are unhoused. Mental health disease is just that—a disease like any other than needs to be treated with the same compassion, diligence and commitment as cancer or heart disease.
I want to know who exactly came up with the pernicious idea to imply that Brown’s butchery is akin to clogged arteries.
Lyles doesn’t need to fret that people will accuse her of villainizing the “unhoused” or mentally ill. She needs to worry that people will rightly feel she insufficiently villainizes incomprehensible evil and criminality.
Lyle’s misbegotten plea for sympathy for the “unhoused” and crazy seeks to divert attention from questions about how a violent criminal with a lengthy police record was loose on the streets of Charlotte.
This repeat violent offender who several years ago “assaulted” his own sister was set loose by Teresa A. Stokes, a North Carolina “magistrate,” in January 2025 to roam Charlotte’s increasingly un-roamable streets and light rails.
Like me, you may be wondering what a “magistrate” is. Hold on to your hats.
In North Carolina, judges appoint magistrates to perform a number of judicial functions, including setting bail and conditions of release. Appointed magistrates are not required to be attorneys, to have attended law school, or even to have a four-year degree. All they need is a two-year associate’s degree.
Stokes’s educational and professional history is a mystery. Everything about her seems to have been scrubbed from the Internet. In the two remaining remaining photos, she is listed as the “Director of Operations” for Second Chance Services. Ian Miles Chong explains the “conflict of interest” between her two jobs:
Second Chance Services [is] a Charlotte clinic for mental health and addiction. That is not just a side job. It is a built-in conflict of interest. The courts feed violent offenders into programs that people like Stokes help run. The softer the judge, the fuller the clinic. It creates an incentive to release dangerous criminals back into the public because their failures become business. When the same judge who decides whether a career criminal stays in prison also profits from the industry of “rehabilitation,” justice no longer exists. It becomes a racket.
I live in Illinois—the home of fishy business. I can smell the stench emanating from Second Chance Services from hundreds of miles away.
Did Second Chance Services ever receive any state or federal funds? Which judge appointed Stokes? How did she get the position? What is her educational background? What was she doing professionally before 2023?
In January 2025, Stokes released Brown who had been arrested on felony weapons and drug charges with nothing more than a written promise that he would appear in court on the designated date. No bail, no secured bond needed in Stokes’s mind because criminals would never break a promise.
Lyles concludes by pleading for sympathy for butcher Brown, who he himself might one day be a victim of crime:
Our community must work to address the underlying issue of access to mental healthcare. Also, those who are unhoused are more frequently the victim of crimes and not the perpetrators. Too many people who are on the street need a safe place to sleep and wrap around services to lift them up.
We, as a community, must do better for those members of our community who need help and have no place to go.
All those callous Charlotteans need to do better for the Browns in their community. No mention of the Irynas.
Will there be thousands of news stories in the NYTimes, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, AXIOS, the Atlantic, and Politico and days of mostly peaceful protests about this black on white crime?
Will leftist white women cry out about the injustice of men with criminal records roaming free to commit heinous acts against law-abiding women?
Will there be heated online comments from leftists about the racial implications of this crime?
Will leftist news outlets explain why the accidental death of Jordan Neely—a mentally ill man who was threatening to kill New York City subway passengers—while being restrained by Daniel Penny merited wall-to-wall coverage but the slaughter of Iryna Zarutska does not?
Many Americans wish Daniel Penny had been on that light rail in North Carolina on August 22.