(The Center Square) – Public defenders for DeCarlos Brown, charged in the death of Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light rail, on Thursday sought a competency hearing for him in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.
Megan Hoffman, first assistant for the Appellate Unit in the office of the Federal Public Defender, in a release said Brown’s “debilitating mental illness and impairment, including severe delusions” has gone on for years. She said he repeatedly requested help and was denied.
Zarutska, 23, died Aug. 22 by stabbing. Chilling video released by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department of the Charlotte Area Transit System video shows Brown and Zarutska in the last moments of her life.
He faces a first-degree murder charge from the state, and a federal charge of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system. He had been arrested 14 times previously including for assault, armed robbery and felony larceny.
“Our mental health and criminal justice systems failed him,” Hoffman said. “And in doing so, they failed to protect the public.”
The critique of the systems is not new. Republicans have been loud for the nearly nine months since, particularly when it comes to a magistrate that released him earlier in 2025 and when it comes to U.S Senate candidate Roy Cooper. The Democrat shaped policy as a two-term governor with an active veto stamp, was influential to the justice system as four-term attorney general, and stands accused through a lawsuit settlement of releasing Brown from behind bars.
His campaign says Brown was not included in the February 2021 settlement between Cooper and the NAACP and ACLU that released 3,500 inmates inclusive of 51 on death row.
“Official mental health examiners for both the state of North Carolina and for the United States Government (Department of Justice-Bureau of Prisons) have evaluated Mr. Brown separately,” Hoffman wrote in a statement. “Those separate evaluations by the state and federal government – done by different mental health examiners over a period of weeks and months – have come to the same conclusion: due to his mental illness Mr. Brown currently is incompetent to proceed in his state and federal criminal cases. Today, in separate filings Mr. Brown’s defense team and the United States Attorney’s Office acknowledged the federal examiners’ findings.”
The next steps will be determined in a federal court.
“A federal judge will decide the next steps in Mr. Brown’s criminal case,” Hoffman said. “If the court declares him incompetent, that does not mean Mr. Brown will be released or that the case is over. Instead, it means that due process requires that he be confined in a secure, locked down psychiatric prison facility until he is able to proceed with his federal criminal case.”
