24/09/2025
This is Nia Wilson and Iryna Zarutska. And I think their stories are your next rabbit hole.
Let’s talk about Nia and Iryna, both young women unalived on public transit, and why the responses to their deaths looked so different:
💛 In July 2018, 18-year-old Nia Wilson, a Black teenager, was fatally stabbed at a BART station in Oakland by John Lee Cowell, a yt man. Her sister was also injured but survived. Cowell was arrested within a day and later sentenced to life without parole.
💛 In August 2025, 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska (a yt Ukrainian refugee) was fatally stabbed on a Charlotte light rail train by Decarlos Brown Jr., a Black man.
Witnesses said the attack was unprovoked. He now faces both state and federal charges that could bring the death penalty.
💛 The public response was not the same.
-For Nia: the Black community mobilized with protests and campaigns, demanding her death be recognized as racial violence. Yet authorities insisted there was “no evidence” of a racial motive, and the media framed her with mugshot-like photos that criminalized her even in death. Once again, the perp was just a “mentally ill lone wolf” 😒
-For Iryna: politicians immediately declared outrage, her refugee status was emphasized as evidence of innocence, and within weeks North Carolina passed “Iryna’s Law” to tighten bail and release conditions. The President himself demanded the death penalty.
✴️ Even the legal consequences were treated differently:
* In California, prosecutors did not pursue the death penalty for Nia, even though a moratorium was issued after her death. Prosecutors also cited Cowell’s schizophrenia as a deciding factor for not pursuing the death penalty
* In North Carolina, prosecutors went in the opposite direction. There’s no moratorium on executions, and Brown’s charges include both state first-degree murder and a federal mass-transit murder charge, making him death-penalty eligible. DeCarlo’s also allegedly schizophrenic.
Political leaders seized the case as proof of a “crime wave,” ensuring it became a rallying point for harsher punishments, often a racist dog whistle.
Why I think this is important:
The juxtaposition exposes how race and politics change the narrative and that the perp’s identity is as impotant as the victim’s.
A yt man unalives a Black girl, and the system downplayed race, focused on mental illness in perp, avoided the death penalty, and the victim was scrutinized.
A Black man unalives a white woman, and the system amplifies her innocence, stacks charges to maximize punishment, and even changes laws in her name with no concern to the perp’s mental health.
America doesn’t grieve all women equally, nor does it punish all men equally. Nia’s death became a fight to prove her humanity. Iryna’s death was treated as proof of someone else’s inhumanity. Black men are a disporportionate amount of death penalty cases, even when yt men commit similar or even exact crimes.
Also, let’s be real: Americans of a certain demo only seem to care about Immigrants when the victim is a yt immigrant… meanwhile the Supreme Court just upheld the right to racially discriminate against immigrants of color. 😑
That’s why Nia Wilson and Iryna Zarutska are your next rabbit hole.
**Reminder: no angry reacts**
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