Ukrainian refugee’s boyfriend slams judge who let Chicago train burning suspect free despite 72 arrests
The boyfriend of a young Ukrainian refugee who was fatally stabbed on a Charlotte train has spoken out after learning that a repeat violent offender in Chicago — also released by a judge despite a long criminal record — allegedly set a woman on fire on public transit.
Stanislav Nikulytsia, whose girlfriend Iryna Zarutska, 23, was murdered in August, criticized the judicial decisions that allowed dangerous offenders like Decarlos Brown and Lawrence Reed to remain free.
Nikulytsia drew a direct comparison between Zarutska’s killing in North Carolina and the Nov. 17 attack on Bethany MaGee aboard a CTA train in Chicago.
“Seventy-two prior arrests sounds like a joke. I guess 72 times was not enough to understand who he is,” Nikulytsia wrote on Instagram while sharing a news report on the Chicago case. “Why do they always wait for them to do something like that before trying to prevent it?”
Zarutska had fled the war in Ukraine in 2022 and was heading home from work when she was stabbed to death on the train.
Brown — a repeat offender with 14 prior arrests — was charged shortly afterward. He had been released in January on cashless bail by Magistrate Judge Teresa Stokes after giving a “written promise” to return to court.
This week, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police released body-camera footage from a January welfare check on Brown. In the video, he tells officers that a “man-made material” is controlling his body — months before he allegedly attacked Zarutska.
In Chicago, 50-year-old Lawrence Reed, who has a long record and eight felony convictions, is accused of dousing MaGee with gasoline and setting her on fire. She remains hospitalized with burns covering 60% of her body.
Reed had been released in August in an unrelated assault case despite prosecutors arguing that he was an obvious threat. Cook County Judge Teresa Molina-Gonzalez opted for electronic monitoring instead of detention, a decision prosecutors warned was “wholly insufficient.”
During a court appearance Monday, Reed yelled “I’m guilty” three times after being told he could face a life sentence.
The White House condemned the policies that allowed both Brown and Reed to remain free, blaming what it described as Democratic-led cities’ soft-on-crime approach. In a statement Tuesday, the administration said Reed was “walking free because of the radical, dangerous ‘no cash bail’ law proudly signed by Governor JB Pritzker and celebrated by Chicago’s defund-the-police Mayor Brandon Johnson.”
Mayor Johnson called the Chicago attack “a tragic incident” that “should never have happened,” describing it as a failure of both the criminal justice and mental health systems. While Johnson previously supported efforts to redirect some public safety funding toward social services as a county commissioner, he pledged during his 2023 mayoral campaign not to reduce police spending.
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