One year ago, this past weekend, a 14-time repeat criminal murdered 20-year-old Iryna Zarutska on a Charlotte, North Carolina transit train, stabbing her three times in the neck from behind. Reportedly, the killer turned to the other occupants of the car and proclaimed, “I got the white girl.” None of her four fellow passengers in the train car called 911 or attempted to render first aid. Only some 90 seconds later did passengers from other parts of the train attempt to render aid, but by then it was already too late. Iryna lay dead in a pool of her own blood on the floor of the car.
The murder sparked a wave of outrage across the U.S., but this was short-lived. While attention focused on the question of why Iryna’s murderer was out on the street, and, gratifyingly, some legislation was passed to address this problem, the wholly justifiable anger at the underlying system failure dissipated with unseemly haste. One year on, we have a scattering of beautiful murals and little else to remind us of her death, and even less to help us believe that it won’t happen again.
I wrote of Iryna’s murder at the time and wrote again of the similar deaths of other young women in similarly horrific circumstances. I wrote of the need for empowerment, for providing women with the tools and the training to better defend themselves, while also contending that nothing short of profound cultural change could create a situation where the Iryna’s of this world might go about their lives without fear.
At the time, I also wondered at the relative reactions between Iryna’s death and that of George Floyd. I will save my observations on the unmerited sanctification of a career criminal for another time, but one thing seems completely clear. The death of George Floyd played perfectly into the already well-established operations of the left’s outrage machine, whose workings reached from the riotous streets all the way to the highest reaches of the Democrat political machine.
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