Mental illness delays Charlotte light rail stabbing charges in federal court
A federal judge has found that DeCarlos Brown Jr.’s mental illness makes him unable to stand trial on his federal charges in the Charlotte light rail stabbing and killing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska.
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He will spend up to the next four months in the custody of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and placed in a prison medical facility, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell ruled in uptown’s federal court on Tuesday. There, doctors will try to restore his mental capacity and get him to be able to understand the charges he faces and how the legal system works.
Bell said the court could one day order Brown to take “forced medication,” but it was too early to rule on that.
Before the hearing, Brown’s attorneys whispered a warning to U.S. marshals that Brown was “hot” today and gave Bell a long piece of paper explaining Brown’s “feelings about this hearing” and future hearings in the case. Brown interrupted his attorney and spoke out for the first time in court, telling Bell: “The FBI refused to investigate, and I want to press charges. And I want the media to know that.”
Eight months before stabbing Zarutska, he told police something similar — that “man-made material” was controlling him and that the FBI told him they wouldn’t investigate and that he should take his medicine.
In court, Brown also said something about “Trump,” but his words were muddied by Bell, his attorneys and U.S. marshals telling him to stop talking.
President Donald Trump called for Brown to face the death penalty after the Aug. 22 stabbing, and U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson’s Office later indicted Brown on a rare charge for killing Zarutska aboard mass transit. Upon conviction, Brown could be sentenced to death.
But “Our Constitution requires that … [Brown] cannot be tried or sentenced to death” while suffering from a mental illness that stunts his ability to understand what is happening, First Assistant Federal Public Defender Megan Hoffman and death penalty lawyer Joshua Kendrick wrote in a motion ahead of the competency hearing.
The less-than-15-minute Tuesday hearing dealt only with the issue of Brown’s mental state. A federal psychiatric report in April found Brown “too mentally ill and impaired to understand the nature and consequences of the criminal case against him,” his federal defense attorneys wrote.
Brown also faces a state murder charge that could also carry a death penalty — but a de-facto moratorium has blocked executions in North Carolina for the last 20 years. That state case was paused after an N.C. judge in April found Brown incapable to proceed.
State prosecutors have said they will wait for the federal case to conclude before resuming their prosecution in Mecklenburg County.
In court Tuesday, the paper Brown’s attorneys gave to Bell read said: “Mr. Brown insists that counsel provide the court with the following information from him: “‘I would like to tell the court I have a body emergency. Someone has full access to my body and they are controlling me wrongfully. And law enforcement refuses to investigate it. And it requires for an investigation. When describing the technology someone was using I was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia.’” The lawyers wrote: “When asked what he wants from the court, he advised counsel that he wants a court order directing ‘law enforcement’ to investigate his body emergency.”
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Brown has a documented history of mental illness, his family said and body-camera footage showed.
In January 2025, Brown told Charlotte police officers he tried and failed to get hospital workers to help him with the “man-made material” he said was controlling him. He called 911 for help and begged two Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officers to investigate it, The Charlotte Observer reported after the newspaper successfully petitioned a judge to order body camera footage of that night be released.
Videos showed Brown told those officers he suffered from schizophrenia and did not take medicine for it. Police arrested Brown that night and charged him with misusing 911. A magistrate released him from jail after he promised to come back to court for his hearings.
Brown, previously convicted of armed robbery and felony larceny and breaking and entering, came back to court when he was supposed to, court records show. Then he boarded the light rail train and fatally stabbed Zarutska in front of other riders.
“For years, Mr. Brown has suffered from debilitating mental illness and impairment,” Brown’s appointed defense team wrote in a May motion asking for Tuesday’s competency hearing. “He experiences delusions that center around his belief that he was exposed to a Material and it ‘control[s] his every movement.’ He refers to it as his Body Emergency.”
“The delusions are constant and persistent,” they wrote.
Assistant U.S. attorneys Edward Ryan and Daniel Cervantes wrote in a motion that the psychiatric evaluation said Brown’s “prognosis to become competent to proceed is good.”
After the hearing, Ferguson said he was “very hopeful” Brown will have his capacity restored.
If, after four months in a prison medical facility, Brown is still not competent, he can be held longer until he is restored. He cannot be held indefinitely, but lawyers can make incremental motions to keep him in the facility until he is restored.
If Brown never becomes sound enough to be prosecuted in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, he will likely be civilly committed to a facility because “his release would create a substantial risk of bodily injury to another person or serious damage to property of another,” assistant U.S. attorneys wrote.
If Brown is one day able to stand trial but successfully uses an insanity defense, the U.S. government will seek to have him civilly committed, Ferguson’s office promised.
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This story was originally published June 9, 2026 at 9:58 AM.
