Iryna Zarutska was a 23 year old Ukrainian refugee who had fled her home country after the Russian invasion. She emigrated to the United States, eventually settling in Charlotte, North Carolina, where she got a job at a pizza parlour. But Iryna had ambitions to become a veterinarian. Sadly, her dreams were cut short one night on a light rail train when she was fatally stabbed to death as she sat in her chair by a man with severe and untreated mental illness.

Train surveillance videos captured the entire, gruesome attack from before she sat down to after, when she had collapsed on the floor by her seat, bleeding out. After being stabbed, Iryna looked at her assailant bewildered and in despair. She held her hands to her face crying before losing consciousness from blood loss. None of the people around her came to her aid. It was a few good Samaritans from another car who eventually tried to help her. But it was too late.

Iryna’s story deserves to be told. Her life mattered. But there is another reason people need to know. The far right in the US is using Iryna’s tragic murder as a means to stoke racist hatred. They are also painting the unhoused and people who have mental health struggles as deranged and violent, when in reality only a minute percentage of these populations have aggressive tendencies. The Trump regime has been using it to justify more draconian crackdowns on the poor and unhoused. Even though statistics clearly show a decline in the crime rate in the US.

Progressives and those on the left should not ignore Iryna Zarutska. Her life deserves dignity. It is also imperative to address the conditions that led to her murder. The US, lacking in any kind of universal healthcare, has also steadily defunded mental health programs. And as rents soar, the population of unhoused people has soared with it.

Capitalist systems created these conditions. And its only solution to the inevitable problems that arise is carceral. To lock people up in for-profit prisons. In the end, this only creates more misery, especially for the working class who cannot afford expensive treatments or high end sanitoriums.

Capitalism has also created a culture of indifference. A social milieu where individuality is lauded as a virtue, and selflessness is seen as a weakness. Everything is transactional. Indeed, under the Trump regime, every naked cruelty that capitalism has to offer has been normalized and celebrated. And this is denuding working class communities of agency and solidarity.

Iryna’s life was cut short in a most brutal and heartless way. We should remember and honour her. But we should be reminded that she was ultimately a victim of capitalism. Of its neglect. Of its indifference. And we should not allow her legacy to be used by far right media and politicians to push for even more policies of brutality and heartlessness.

Kenn Orfanos, September 2025