By Owen Evans

The family of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, who was stabbed to death in North Carolina, has filed a lawsuit seeking damages, alleging the City of Charlotte and hired parties failed to prevent the circumstances that led to her killing.

The wrongful death lawsuit filed on Aug.21 alleges Zarutska’s death was preventable.

The suit claims that the City of Charlotte and Professional Police Services, a private security company contracted by the Charlotte Area Transit System, were aware of violent crime issues on the city’s 9.6‑mile LYNX Blue Line but failed to take reasonable safety measures.

It claimed that long before Iryna Zarutska boarded that train, defendants “knew that violent crime had repeatedly occurred on and around the Blue Line and the Charlotte Transportation Center.”

It said that despite that knowledge, defendants “failed to use reasonable and available safety measures, including fare enforcement, physical access barriers, adequate staffing, effective security deployment, monitoring, and passenger warnings.”

“Defendants were responsible for protecting lawful passengers from known and foreseeable dangers, and their failures caused the fatal stabbing of Iryna Zarutska inside the train,” it added.

The lawsuit claims Professional Police Services left critical security vacancies unfilled.

And because of this, the transit system was severely understaffed, leaving Professional Police Services “without the capacity to deploy security personnel to the Blue Line light rail cars at the times and locations where defendants knew violent crime was concentrated,” it said.

This meant it failed to prevent non-ticketed and dangerous individuals from boarding the light rail, monitor and patrol the light rail cars, and protect lawful passengers, including Iryna Zarutska, from “reasonably foreseeable criminal attacks.”

The suit comes a year after the killing.

Zarutska was killed on Aug. 22, 2025, while riding the city’s light rail, minutes after taking a seat in front of the man accused of attacking her, according to police. Her family said she had recently fled war-torn Ukraine and settled in Charlotte.

The Charlotte Area Transit System released the footage showing Zarutska boarding the Lynx Blue Line around 9:45 p.m. on Aug. 22, wearing a pizzeria uniform and scrolling on her phone. A man, Decarlos Brown Jr, in a red hoodie was seated behind her. About four minutes later, he pulled out a knife and stabbed her several times, including at least once in the neck.

After the sudden assault, nearby passengers did not physically intervene or immediately render medical assistance as she sat in shock and eventually collapsed.

She was pronounced dead at the scene.

In June, a federal judge deemed Brown incompetent to stand trial for Zarutska’s fatal train stabbing.

Brown, 34, who had a criminal history and had previously been committed for schizophrenia, was committed to a federal facility for treatment for up to four months in an attempt to restore competency, Judge Kenneth D. Bell said in his order on June 9.

After Brown’s time in the treatment facility, the court will again take up the case to determine whether he is considered competent. If he is found competent, the murder case will resume.

If he is not found competent and the court finds he cannot be restored to competency, the court will rule on further treatment.

Brown was charged with one count of Violence Against a Railroad Carrier and Mass Transportation System Resulting in Death. If convicted, the defendant faces the death penalty.

The attack garnered international attention at the time, including from President Donald Trump, who said that Brown should get the death penalty.

“There can be no other option!” he said in a Sept. 10, 2025, Truth Social post.

The Epoch Times has contacted the City of Charlotte and Professional Police Services for comment.

Tom Ozimek and Savannah Hulsey Pointer contributed to this report.