The stabbing of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska has deeply impacted many people around the world. Millions are sympathizing with Iryna’s grieving family who came to America, believing they would be safer here than in Ukraine, where they were living in a bomb shelter three short years ago.

Yet as we learn more about Iryna, we’re discovering troubling information about her murderer, 35-year-old Decarlos Brown, Jr. as well. He’s been a career criminal since 2007 and was released from state custody 14 times. (Notably, most of the charges he faced between 2007 and 2014 were dropped.) In 2015, he was arrested for armed robbery and put in a state prison until 2020. As recently as January of this year, Brown was charged with a misdemeanor for misusing 911. However, he was released with no bail and was pending trial.

While it’s important to assess the justice system and ask whether the courts should have and could have kept Brown behind bars, it’s becoming more obvious that there are holes in the mental health care system as well. Brown was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2020, and his own family has consistently said that they sought help from mental health care providers and facilities, knowing that he was a danger to society — including themselves. In fact, shortly after he was released from a five-year prison sentence in 2020, he was arrested for assaulting his sister.

Brown’s mother and sister say that Brown believes there is a man-made substance inside him that controls him. In fact, he told his sister in a phone call after he stabbed Zarutska that this material “stabbed the lady.”

In an interview with ABC News, Brown’s mother, Michelle Dewitt, said that when he lived with her after he was released from prison in 2020, he would slam doors, yell at her, and talk to himself. Doctors diagnosed him with schizophrenia and prescribed him medicine, but he refused to take it. As she became more concerned about their safety, she took Brown to a mental health hospital. However, sadly, she was told they didn’t have enough room to admit him because he wasn’t threatening to hurt himself. They told her that she couldn’t force him to be there. Subsequently, Dewitt had to go to court to file a petition with a magistrate for her son to get help. A mental health facility then kept Brown for 14 days, but then released him back to her. Brown again refused to take his medication. Dewitt and her husband did not feel safe, so they brought him to a men’s homeless shelter in Charlotte. After this, Brown’s family would see him walking the streets and riding the mass transportation system.

Just nine months ago, on January 19, Brown called 911, asking police to investigate a “man-made” material that he believed controlled when he ate, walked, and talked. Police officers who arrived told him he needed medical help and that there was nothing they could do. He then became very upset, and police charged him with “misuse of the 911 system.” Brown was then released without bail as long as he promised to return to court. According to Newsmax, “Brown’s public defender requested a mental evaluation to determine if he could contribute to his defense. A judge signed an order on July 28, telling Brown to report to a community forensic evaluator within seven days. It’s unclear if Brown went.”

Why did Judge Teresa Stokes believe it was safe for Brown to be released without bail in January, believing that he was competent and trustworthy enough to return to court six months later? And according to Matthew Mangino, a former district attorney in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, “The standard [for setting bail] is ‘will the accused appear for future proceedings' and ‘is the accused a threat to the public.’” Having called 911 because he believed there was a substance inside of him that controlled him, and then lashing out at police, it seems there was ample evidence to indicate that he was a threat to the public. Should Judge Stokes have set bail and ordered an immediate mental evaluation — instead of waiting for his public defender to order an evaluation six months later?

Besides evaluating the courts’ bail requirements and mental evaluation processes, some are asking whether more options need to be available for people who are mentally ill. Do states need to open more long-term mental health facilities so that psychiatric patients such as Brown can get help there instead of having to choose between living with family (and potentially endangering them) or becoming homeless? Brown’s mother says she tried to obtain involuntary psychiatric commitment this year after he became violent at home; however, receiving this kind of help is extremely difficult. A court has to rule that a person is a danger to himself or to others. But in Brown’s case, his family clearly thought he was. The courts should have taken that into consideration, along with his diagnosed schizophrenia and long criminal history. They then could have determined that he was a danger to society and have Brown committed to a long-term mental health facility.

In a September 9 press conference, special agent in charge of the FBI in North Carolina, James C. Barnacle Jr., became emotional when talking about Iryna Zarutska. He and U.S. District Attorney Russ Ferguson had just spoken with her family. He expressed how this case hits home because he has daughters, and this heinous murder could have happened to anyone’s daughter on her way home from work. He pleaded for politicians to work together to solve these policy problems within the justice and health care systems, saying, “Why do we have people — whether there’s mental health issues, or violent crime issues — why are they on the streets? Why are buses, our trains, our transportation systems almost homeless shelters, or mental health shelters? We need to fix that. We need to clean that up. [The FBI] can only do so much. This is going to take a lot more work from society, from the people in power and the politicians.”

Elected officials need to heed Barnacle’s advice and examine ways to improve coordination between the courts and the mental health care system for the sake of public safety. When families want to place their mentally ill loved one in a long-term facility out of concern for the public’s safety, they ought to have the ability to do so.

As the church, which is called to love our neighbors as ourselves, we need to pray for God:

1. To show us how we can help families who are struggling to care for their loved one who is suffering from mental illness.
2. To give our government officials wisdom and unity to address problems in our mental health care and justice systems.
3. To be present in the lives of those suffering from mental illness, so that they might be healed. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). For he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world!