Failing the Victims

Episode summary:

Failing victims like Iryna Zarutska is not just a tragedy, it is the predictable result of a mental health system that refuses to deal honestly with dangerous, severely ill offenders. In today’s Daily Update, we walk through the case of Decarlos Brown Jr. and how judges, hospitals, and lawmakers all played a role in letting a clearly unstable, violent man slip through the cracks. We talk about why competency standards matter, why short‑term “stabilize and release” care is failing, and why some people simply must be kept away from the public for everyone’s safety. This is a sober, conservative look at how a civilized society can show compassion to the mentally ill while still protecting innocent people from preventable violence.

What you’ll learn / Key moments

• 00:01 – The core question: what do we do about the criminally and seriously mentally ill?
• 00:10 – Case setup: Decarlos Brown Jr. and the murder of Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light rail line.
• 00:54 – Missed warnings: his mother’s concerns, a schizophrenia diagnosis, and a “full” mental health hospital.
• 01:41 – How our “ER‑style” approach to mental health care fails dangerous offenders and endangers the public.
• 02:06 – A conservative call to rethink long‑term, sometimes involuntary treatment for the severely and criminally mentally ill.

What you can do

If you believe our justice and mental health systems should protect victims first, this is the time to get involved locally. Share this episode with friends, neighbors, and elected officials, and press your county commissioners, legislators, and hospital boards on how they handle dangerous, severely mentally ill offenders. Support policies that allow earlier, longer‑term intervention—not just a two‑week stay and a bottle of pills—and insist on laws that put the safety of innocent people ahead of bureaucratic convenience while still treating the mentally ill with dignity.

What do we do about the criminally and seriously mentally ill?

This is the Wilmington Standard Daily Update for Wednesday June 10, 2026.

Decarlos Brown Jr – who murdered Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte light rail line last year – has once again been found incompetent to proceed with trial.    He will be committed for four months and receive treatment – at the end of which he will be reevaluated as to his mental fitness.

We are indeed still a civilized nation – so it is morally and ethically correct that we make sure that people who are standing trial for a crime have the mental ability to defend themselves in court.  Just as it is right to have different legal standards for children, so too is it a measure of a society’s level of justice to have a plan in place for those who are mentally ill or incompetent.

It should never have come to this in the first place.  Following his release in 2020 from prison for armed robbery, Mr. Brown’s mom said “he was very different.”   Her son had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and had been given medication – which he refused to take.   She tried bringing him to a mental health hospital – but they told her they were already full. She was also told that she just couldn’t make him go if he did not want to get treatment.  It took the intervention of a judge to send Mr. Brown for inpatient mental health care.  Which he got – for 14 days – before being released back to his mom – who was feeling threatened in the first place.

And that is where we failed Iryna Zarutska and other victims of attacks by those with severe mental illness.  We treat their psychological problems the way we deal with physical trauma – treat it quickly and as needed, proscribe medication, and then release the patient.  Rinse and repeat.

But treating mental illness is not like a visit to an emergency room.   It could take years or a lifetime to address many psychological challenges – many of which will never be cured and will always require medication and supervision.  Just throwing money at the problem is not the solution – we have to rethink our entire process of treating the severely and sometimes criminally mentally ill. 

And we have to understand for some – like those who are isolated for a highly communicable disease against their will – being involuntarily separated from the rest of society might just be the only option – and should be used far earlier than much too late.

For the Wilmington Standard, I’m Reuel Sample.  Thanks for listening.