Previously Published in The Messenger
The chilling murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarusla is unfortunately yet another episode in the overall saga of rampant crime, repeat offenders, and a porous justice system that seems as effective as it is involved — it’s not.
The security camera footage shows the twenty-three-year-old Charlotte, North Carolina, resident taking her seat on the subway while looking at her phone, unaware that her life expectancy went from several decades to just several seconds.
Behind her, Decarlos Brown, Jr., 34, a repeat offender with a criminal history dating back to 2011, takes out a knife and stabs Zaruska multiple times in the neck. He walks away and paces around the train before walking up the car out of sight. Zaruska places her face in her hands shortly before falling over in her seat to the floor. Blood begins spilling out onto the floor of the car.
All of this occurs while fellow passengers are nonchalantly on their phones, even observing the murder.
But none of them jumped in to stop the attack or render aid immediately.
With how fatal stab wounds to the neck tend to be, it’s a question if Zaruska could have been saved with immediate attention. However, the overall point is that reactions were beleaguered and the public seems completely unmotivated to swarm an attacker and at least stop him from leaving.
Passengers did eventually tend to Zaruska, but clearly not in time.
While the backwards laws, progressive legislators and district attorneys, and judges who coddle criminals — all of whom should be held accountable for their dereliction of duty — all wreak havoc on the at-large quality of life in the United States, there’s one element to this that can be changed: public apathy.
What happened to the crowd who would swarm an attacker and beat him senseless if he tried to kill someone? What happened to the public who would tear off their own shirt to stop the victim’s bleeding? What happened to the citizenry that cared enough to drop what they were doing to intervene?
No doubt we have a judicial problem, but we have a much bigger problem: a public who doesn’t seem to care.