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Editor’s Note:
For those who missed it, we’re now linking four news stories within each newsletter. Roca members will have access to all stories; free readers will get 1-2 a day. Click here to upgrade.
Those four stories today are: New UFO Footage was released; former Brazilian President Bolsonaro was found guilty of coup charges; Ryan Routh begins trial for his attempted assassination of Donald Trump (free); and the FBI’s manhunt for Charlie Kirk’s shooter (free).
By Max Frost
By now, you’ve likely seen the images: 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, is sitting on a light-rail train in Charlotte. She’s looking at her phone. Then, before she knows what’s happening, a man behind her – 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr. – stands up and stabs her with a knife. She quickly collapses on the floor, dead.
While the killing has ignited a political firestorm, it fits a trend: A mentally ill repeat offender is set free and proceeds to commit a heinous crime.
What laws and policies allow such people to walk free? How do authorities choose to set them free? Today, we track Decarlos Brown Jr.’s run-ins with the criminal justice system to answer those questions.
Records show Brown’s first arrest at age 16 in 2007. As a young adult, his offenses escalated: In 2011, at age 20, he was convicted of felony larceny; in 2014, at 23, Brown committed armed robbery, for which he was sentenced to five years in prison.
Those who knew him observed erratic behavior even then; family members later said Brown’s grasp on reality was tenuous.
During or shortly after his incarceration, Brown’s mental health issues became more evident. He began exhibiting paranoid delusions and volatility that alarmed those around him. After Brown’s release from prison in September 2020 (having served roughly the full five-year term for the armed robbery), his family hoped he could start fresh. Instead, within months, he was rearrested for assaulting his own sister during a domestic incident.
After the assault, Brown does not appear to have received prison time of any significance; likely, it was handled as a domestic assault charge with perhaps probation or time served (details of that case haven’t been fully reported, but he was free again not long after). Brown’s mother, meanwhile, sought to have him involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility.
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Editor’s Note
Thanks for reading. What’s your take here: Is this just the type of thing that falls through the cracks, or are people at fault? Let us know by replying to this email.
Our inbox was overflowing with replies to yesterday’s story on Charlie Kirk. A number of readers wrote in saying that we should have written about Kirk’s allegedly racist/misogynistic/homophobic/etc. views.
Responding to an assassination by looking at someone’s words misses the point. People have divergent viewpoints; people say stuff others deem inflammatory. None of it is relevant as to whether someone has the right to live.
Shawn wrote:
Thanks for this, guys. I have replied to Wrap stories and things before as you probably know, but I actually work on the campus where this happened. I did not know much Kirk and therefore didn't have much of an opinion - positive or negative - about him before. But this has heavily impacted our campus community, so thank you for treating his whole story with calmness and an earnestly neutral attitude. This already takes you from 'A+ ' news source to me to an "A+++", in true 'Ralphie's Teacher from Christmas Story' fashion. Keep up the good work.
Anonymous wrote:
In terms of what happens next… this will only further the push of more young people becoming conservative. I think there are a lot of people out there who think of this kind of violence against republicans as coming directly from the left (two attempts on Trumps life, shootings of republican congress men/women) because the left knows they’re losing nationally on message. However, all this violence does is spark a further drive to the right. I don’t think the outcome is hard to predict here. I think the outcome is solely that this pushes people further away from the left because they will associate this kind of action with how the left acts. A lot of people call the right “radical” but there is nothing more radical than continued assassination attempts on right leaning political figures.
Sam from Raleigh said:
I was really disappointed in your coverage of "How Charlie Kirk Moved Gen Z Right." Nowhere in the article did you mention any of the inflammatory things Kirk has said in his career. This is not the objective, unbiased, non-partisan news coverage that you claim.
Editor’s Note: The article was not about Kirk’s views. It was about how he built a massive following and important organization, and the impact that had on the electorate. All of that is factual and undeniable. When getting into his positions, one reader’s “inflammatory” statement is another’s deeply held opinion. Someone’s words are irrelevant as to whether they should be assassinated.
And last but not least, Jillian wrote in:
You can hate Charlie Kirk and what he stands for but also be a good human in return. I saw some people post about how Democrats sent their condolences, but no Republicans sent theirs when the MN senator/her husband were killed. I find that highly unlikely that an entire party wouldn’t send condolences, but if that is true, DO BETTER THAN THEM. Be a better person, show compassion for the family he left behind and all the people who are currently mourning the loss of someone they looked up to. “But Charlie Kirk was a racist/sexist/bigot?” Then BE BETTER THAN HIM. Show love instead of hate. Unite instead of divide. Be willing to have these difficult conversations with people without insulting their character. For all the people that celebrated his death, there were more that were willing to put aside their differences and see this as a non-partisan issue. There were even those who said they were glad to see the rhetoric he stood for fall (hypothetically), but also empathize with his family.
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We’ll see you tomorrow.
—Max and Max
