Horrible Story Out of Charlotte

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This horrific story from Charlotte, North Carolina popped into my
feed and apparently this situation took place on what they
call the Cats in the Charlotte area transit system. It
shows the surveillance footage shows this twenty three year old

(00:22):
woman and she if we look into her life, right,
it shouldn't matter who this is, to be honest, but
because this could theoretically happen to anyone, and there should
still be as much outrage no matter who it was.
But the fact that it was a twenty three year

(00:42):
old refugee from Ukraine. Arena Zarutska is her name, and
she was killed mercilessly by this guy randomly. It appears
like she's sitting there. I mean, she's just twenty three
years old. I mean she left Ukraine, a war torn

(01:06):
country right now. And what we're learning is, you know,
she was here because she didn't want to be there.
This country's supposed to be the place that people run
to for help. Now we have that in and of itself.
Is a pretty controversial topic these days because there are

(01:27):
plenty of groups, plenty of immigration groups, and plenty of
advocates of people who do immigrate legally and illegally that
oppose how our government operates. But you can see here
someone who legally wanted to be here in the United States,

(01:48):
at least for a time. A country that she's coming
from is out war and has been at war for
three and a half years, and here she is. She's
scroll on her phone, just sitting there on the public
transportation in Charlotte, just sitting there. And then this guy,

(02:10):
a thirty four year old African American who I'll get
to his laundry list of things that he's been charged
with over the years. But he stabs her. He's he
stands up, sitting behind her. He just he stands up

(02:33):
and just starts. I don't know, there is no escalation.
It's not like they seem to be arguing about anything.
This guy just stands up and starts murdering her. I'm
not saying his name, but he's now charged with first

(02:57):
degree murber This happened on August twenty second, like the
night of August twenty second. So I was thinking about, like,
how long ago that is. It's two full weeks plus.
It took two weeks for us in the public to
learn about this. There wasn't I don't understand how anyone

(03:20):
could think, like, why wouldn't there be outrage for this?
I have a couple of reasons why Number one is
and this is Charlotte, North Carolina. I I don't know
how the Charlotte area. I know that we're talking about
a lot of other cities and their crime rates and

(03:40):
violent crime and how often something like this would happen.
I don't know where Charlotte lands on that it certainly
would be more than how Omaha like, more violent than
how we view Omaha. It certainly, you would imagine, is
less violent than the way that we talk about places
like Chicago and Washington, DC, or places like oh what
I would imagine like Memphis or Oakland or New Orleans.

(04:05):
But no, no, it's just one of these things that
one random person doesn't even really matter about crime rate,
doesn't really even matter about where it took place. This person,
for some reason, decided he was going to inflict a
ton of violence and attempt to kill someone and dead

(04:26):
and a life is lost because a maniac was allowed
to be on the streets. This guy was arrested fourteen
times before fourteen times. That in and of itself is
just it's alarming. That there could be people just wandering

(04:47):
around who have been arrested even a half dozen times,
don't you think like, okay, a half dozen times, that's
a bit much. Maybe we need to start thinking about
either some escalation to the penalties. Maybe we need to
start thinking about, Okay, this person obviously does not want
to behave and be a part of society in a

(05:07):
way that is constructive. I don't know what it takes,
and I'm not trying to infringe on anybody's First Amendment
rights here, But when you sit here with a straight
face and tell me, oh, yeah, this guy's been arrested
over a dozen times and it's just out here wandering around,
and then he decides to kill someone and does an
innocent woman, by all accounts, seems like she's just sitting there. Felony, larceny,

(05:32):
feel any breaking in entering a conviction for robbery with
a dangerous weapon. He was in prison for six years,
released in twenty twenty, was on parole until twenty twenty one,
and then other charges included communicating threats and a misuse
of the nine to one one system just earlier this year.
So all that I have no idea what he's doing. Now.
This is the other thing too. We've heard about the

(05:54):
rehabilitation process for somebody who is incarcerated. I watched a movie.
It's a movie I don't want anybody to take. It's
called The Card Counter and it's a drama. It's pretty recent.
I think it's probably just a few years old, but
it's the overarching theme of it. While I really was
fascinated by the movie, the overarching theme was that the

(06:17):
guy is so like used to and he feels so
adjusted to the incarcerated life, and he's there for a
handful of years that he is okay going back and
he's wrestling with that. And I don't know how accurate

(06:40):
that is for every single person that's ever served a
lot of time that they just don't know how to
live otherwise. But I feel like it's pretty insane for
somebody just to decide they're going to take the life
of somebody else, either because they want to be incarcerated
or because they are insane, Like these are people that
should not be amongst us. Now. I do have a

(07:01):
few other things that are going to be talked about
with this and in ways to prevent this, and why
we didn't hear about it for two weeks, and why
we're not hearing the same type of outrage, and why
there are plenty of these major news outlets who haven't
even touched on this story until this weekend, and that

(07:21):
includes both liberal and conservative news sources that just either
didn't pick up on it or didn't bother to talk
about it for one reason or another. I'll give you
my opinion on how that happened coming up next on
news Radio eleven ten kfab em Rase's songer starting our
conversation to start the week in a way that I
really wouldn't like to, but it is the story that

(07:45):
made me feel the most over the week. And I'm
sure if you've heard of it and you've heard about it,
it's made you feel something too. I felt like my
biggest takeaway from this was, Okay, yeah, why haven't I
heard about this from anyone else in two weeks after
it's over with? And my first inclination was, we have

(08:10):
no gun involved, so this was not a killing with
a gun. So the gun narrative and the gun advocacy
and the people who have built their entire political political
platform on pushing against guns and wanting to see reformation

(08:33):
of the gun rules in this country. This does not
apply to them. So you didn't hear a peep from
those people. They're really outraged when there's a senseless killing
with a gun, and as they should be, and as
we all should be. And there are things that a
gun allows people to do that a knife or any

(08:56):
other blunt instrument would not. You have to be within
a certain range, you know, the the ease of which
you could kill someone with a gun. I can understand
why people say that that is a completely different issue.
But to me, killing is killing. And if we can't
speak about murder as a like this strange state of

(09:22):
mind that people, this guy doesn't I don't think he
predisposed himself to killing this specific individual. He just randomly
killed her, which is even more alarming to me. She
did nothing to him. She was literally just sitting there
existing and he decided to kill her. I mean, you're

(09:49):
not going to find a legitimate motive here unless she
said something to him that we don't see in the footage,
or unless there is something back behind the scenes between
this guy and in her that wasn't super obvious on
the surface. It just doesn't seem like you were going
to find a real motive. This is just a crazed
maniac with a knife who decided to kill somebody randomly

(10:13):
and did so in a public space. Public transportation was
twenty three years old. I mean, it's just so sad.
So you didn't have the gun thing so it didn't fire.
Like if this was a shooting on the subway system
in Charlotte, then I think this is everywhere immediately. The

(10:34):
second thing, whom did it? It is an African American
man who has been arrested fourteen times. There's like no
defending this person in their actions, even though somebody tried.
Somebody decided they wanted to make a GoFundMe to help
fund this guy's court costs or something, saying that he

(10:56):
was failed by our system, like the jail system, the
prison sent system, the judges who allowed him to wander.
It's him who was also failed. He is somehow a victim.
Here now go fund Me pulled that down. It is
not available as of now on their website because I'm sorry,
like you're asking me to donate money to this guy

(11:19):
because you were telling me that this court system failed him. No,
the court system failed this twenty three year old Ukrainian refugee.
The court system failed anybody else who was a victim
of this guy, I don't know. I'm not an expert
on due process. You know, all these people on Twitter

(11:40):
and all these liberal people want to, you know, especially
when it comes to this ice stuff, want to yell
about due process and how due process needs to be served.
You're you're violating somebody's First Amendment rights if you don't
give them due process. Well, what at some point is
due process? Can we can we sit and talk about
how due process is important to make sure somebody actually

(12:03):
did what they did. But once a pattern is starting
to develop, like say a person gets arrested three times
or six times, or does the same thing multiple times,
gets incarcerated and still is running into trouble with the law.
I mean, this guy apparently was in prison for a

(12:24):
handful of years and then was on parol for an
additional year, and still was having run ins and being
charged with stuff after the fact. Yet he's just wandering
around carrying a knife, just looking to inflict violence on people.
Is that what due process looks like in our country?
You know Donald Trump today when he's talking about this,
he mentioned cashless bail and how that could play a

(12:49):
factor in it. Right, So Trump's cashle spelled to comment
today was this cashless spell started a wave in our
country where a killer kills somebody and is out on
the street by the afternoon and in many cases going
out killing again. Cashless bail we need to end. Like
due process and bail, I don't see is the same thing.

(13:12):
Now if you are arrested and put in jail for
suspicion of anything that is a violent crime and you
can literally not have real money to pay for it,
you can literally just essentially have like this. Iou and

(13:33):
for the people who run bailbonds and those companies like
I'm not trying to say that that's not a way
to make a living or anything like that, but there's
no parameters as to whom could have access to this.
So now our due process is so muddy. It's not
even just about what you can be charged with or

(13:55):
how your charge or what your penalties are for what
you do. Considering this guy has robbed is in Charge
for larceny multiple times and has served prison time and
has been charged even earlier this year with misusing the
nine one one system, and he apparently was going crazy
and he was off the deep end fourteen times is

(14:15):
more than enough for me to say, this is not
a person who was interested in being a functional and
positive use for society. I don't know if he has
a job. I don't know what his relationships are with
people around him. I don't know if he's got a
significant other or his family's around. I don't know if
he has any children. At some point we have to
look and understand that there are people who have no

(14:38):
interest in being positive influences on the community in which
they live. That doesn't mean everybody's going to be a killer,
especially a random killer. And that's why there's no outrage
to this, because this is a person that fits all
of the wrong stereotypes, which I think are unfair for

(14:59):
a lot of peop people of African American heritage. But
this is exactly what people get afraid of. This could
have been anybody, but now you have to be afraid
of everybody. When you go on a subway, you just
have to like, oh, you're being told now, if there's
somebody that's in a hoodie, somebody who's African American, somebody

(15:22):
who looks suspicious, you just should get away from them.
You can't even live your life properly because you're you
have to live in fear like this twenty three year
old Ukrainian refugee. He was just sitting and minding your
own business and she got stabbed to death. It's not
fair for anyone in this country. So at what point
do we take the people who actually are criminals and say, look,

(15:45):
it is pretty clear that you do not want to
be a useful person in this world, and we just
need to start approaching every subsequent arrest in charge and
make it a more severe punishment. People like this should
not be on streets looking to inflict violence. At thirty
four years old being arrested fourteen times, that's averaging once

(16:07):
a year from the age of twenty. That is not normal.
That is not normal behavior. And this is a person
I don't care what their background is. By age twenty,
you should probably know better. I know people who knew
better and have been arrested once or twice for one
reason or another. Weird stuff can happen. I'm not I

(16:31):
don't know exactly what it would take to get arrested.
I have not been arrested. I know people have gotten
taken to jail because they were operating a vehicle while intoxicated.
I know people that got into a domestic dispute and
ended up spending a night in jail. I know people
that have had like a beef with somebody, They've gotten
into a physical altercation, or they damaged some of their property,

(16:51):
or they trespassed on their property and they've been charged
with that. I'm not forgiving any of those things, but
I know people who have had moments where that has happened.
They have had something like that happen, and after that
took place, they use that as a wake up call

(17:13):
and decided that they needed to be a better person.
Usually we can try to figure out who those people are.
But when you're getting arrested pretty consistently, including for violent
crimes and serving prison time over the better part of
fourteen years, think about that the guy was in prison
for five or six years, so all fourteen of these
would have had to come in like an eight year

(17:34):
span of between age twenty and thirty four. Yet no
red flags. We just let this guy keep winding around
like he's nobody. Yeah, where's the outrage. You're not gonna
see it from the usual suspects for obvious reasons. And
it's really sad. It's really really sad. It is two thirty.
If you want to email me Emrie at kfab dot

(17:54):
com with your thoughts today. If you're interested, please feel
free to send me a note. On news Radio eleven ten,
Emery's song you Won't Go to College on news Radio
eleven ten Kfab the conversation that one person could realistically

(18:15):
have and get somewhere about a random killing in a
city far away, you know, or a thousand plus miles
away from Charlotte, North Carolina. But that stabbing killing that
we're learning about two weeks after the fact tells us
an awful lot. And I had a couple of reasons
why that may be because usually you need the really loud,

(18:35):
outraged people to have it fit into a narrative. The
only narrative that this fills, essentially is the unfortunate stereotyping
of African American people or people of any race, people
of color in general. And I'm not a fan of that.

(18:57):
I'm not a fan of that. And this is why
you see like a lot of posts about this, African
American people saying we have to do better than this
speaking about themselves as a race. I hate talking about
this like this. I have many friends who are African
American or Mexican American, or from other countries, or their

(19:18):
parents are from other countries, or know I know and
went to school with, and have great respect for a
lot of people like this. You may don't like him,
but the mayor of Omaha is a man of color.
You may not like him because of his politics, but
that is a nice man. He is a good person.
I have talked to him, John Ewing. We're about to

(19:41):
cheer on maybe the most successful athlete ever to come
out of Omaha, Terrence Crawford, another proud Omaha who happens
to be African American. I would hate for somebody like
Terrence Crawford to walk onto a bus or to a subway.
And I'm sure he gets to travel a little bit more,

(20:03):
a little bit more high level these days, but if
he were to get on something public transportation just because
of the way that he looks, do you think it's
fair that people would just outright assume that this is
a violent person and I need to be afraid of him. No,
of course not. But there are people out there who

(20:23):
are on social media or saying this is why you
shouldn't be afraid to do that. You need to take
care of yourself if you see somebody suspicious or somebody
from a different race. I mean, it could have been
a white tweaker who could have done something like this too,
and I'm sure that they have. But there isn't an
obvious outrage point. There just isn't for the usually loud

(20:47):
outraged types. We actually have to talk about solutions. Now.
It's not about well, let's get the gunzo. Well, let's
let's we gotta worry about you know, the system is
filled this guy, right, Yeah, the penal system failed this
guy by arresting him fourteen times and releasing him and

(21:07):
allowing him to commit violent crime after violent crime. Yeah,
maybe we need to talk about that system or hear
me out on this. That the mental health situation that
we all are enraptured and talking about on both sides
of the aisle, Like the mental health situation with a
person who identifies as trans, with a person who is

(21:30):
a mass shooter, whether they were trans or not, the
mental health of a person who can't decide if they
want to go to school that day or they might
consider committing suicide. All of these different mental health red
flags that we constantly talk about us needing to do
better to address mental health, here's what you can also do.

(21:55):
There are different types of help that you need to
have available to people. A person that has a violent
history and a laundry list of crimes, there are a
lot of red flags there, maybe not pointing directly that
every single person that commits you know, a handful of
robberies and gets arrested, which to me seems like more

(22:15):
than enough to put this person away for a long, long,
long time. But whatever you put this person in this situation,
you put this person into society after all of that. Right,
is there a way we can mentally rehabilitate a person
who is apparently set on committing crime after crime after crime,

(22:39):
even after being punished for it, it did not change
this person. This person did not change the way that
they acted because they went to prison. They were just
as bad after. Yet we just allowed this person with
a laundry list of robberies, larcenies charges, felony is jail time,

(23:02):
and we just allow them to walk around. That's fine,
due process right, completely refusing to take account for every
other crime that this person is committed, and why we
should be able to think to ourselves, this person is
a dangerous individual and is likely to do something really,

(23:24):
really bad when they are released. We have the trends
both before and after prison. This person did not change.
So yes, you might be saying, okay, that, like, are
the judges accountable? I don't think the judges are that accountable.
The system should be held accountable. The whole system should

(23:46):
be held accountable. When you commit crimes, you should be
in trouble. You should have consequences. And if you commit
multiple crimes, especially multiple violent crimes, very very quickly, after
one after another, one per year, since you're an adult.
More than that, when you consider the fact this guy

(24:06):
was behind bars for six years, maybe we should have
a system that increases the penalties. I just I can't
believe that we don't talk about this now. I don't
know how prisons work. I'm sure that they're working on
ways to make prisoners feel like they're still capable of

(24:28):
helping society in a positive way and rehabilitating how they
feel about themselves and how they feel about the world
around them. You hear about these different programs with dogs.
They'll like, let them help train dogs. That's great. I
love that, you know there are people who want to
be redeemed. They want to have a chance to give

(24:49):
back to the community. We're located from, you know, just
a block away from Oodulali, which is a great restaurant
here in the Dundee area, and there are people who
are former inmates that are working there, and I love
that that you've kind of helped set them up to
be a positive influence on the society that we're in.
There are ways to do this, but we're not talking

(25:12):
about it. Every single time a crime like this happens,
and we have to look at ourselves in a society
in the mirror and be like, what do we do
to make this never happen again? Nobody ever has an answer.
People bring politics in it so quickly. There's absolutely nothing
political about what happened in Charlotte two weeks ago. Nothing, nothing,

(25:38):
And that's why you haven't heard anything about it. Isn't
that a sad indictment of this community, like of this
entire country, is that if there's not a political angle
to take, nobody wants to talk about it. If this
would have been a person that said something Arabic or
had an Arabic last name, or was it an illegal

(26:00):
immigrant from Mexico. Oh, it would be everywhere. Oh man,
would it be everywhere? Oh man? Could you imagine if
it was a gun that was used to do the killing, Oh,
it'd be everywhere. We would have known immediately that there
was this insane shooting by a maniac killing somebody on

(26:20):
a Charlotte subway. But no, it wasn't any of those things.
So all of the typical people who shout from the
rooftops as suit as something like this happens didn't hear
peep because they couldn't use it for their own political gain. Yeah,
that's where our country is, ladies and gentlemen. So do
we really want to fix these types of problems? Do

(26:41):
we want to talk about mental health? Or do we
want our side to win more elections? Because those are
kind of the two forks in the road that we
run into, apparently, and we have to make that determination. Me.
I would just like to see America be as safe
as possible, and a twenty three year old Ukrainian refugee
just to be able to live her life while she's
in our country, not feelingless. She has to look over

(27:01):
our shoulder that somebody that's crazed in maniacal is trying
to kill her. Apparently you can't even do that these days.
Or coming up on news radio eleven ten KFAB and
Mary's songer on news Radio eleven ten KFAB, we were
talking about that just horrendous and absolutely inexcusable killing, a

(27:21):
stabbing of an innocent twenty three year old Ukrainian refugee
while on a subway system train in Charlotte, and I
mentioned how if it was a person who was an
illegal immigrant that committed the killing, it would have been
everywhere right away. If it was a person who made
the killing with the gun, it would have been everywhere
right away. But because there's no political gain, we didn't

(27:44):
hear about this for two weeks, and just now certain
people in national media are picking up on it, saying, okay,
maybe we should talk about this, and Donald Trump has
said something about it today, so you know it's catching on.
Two weeks later we finally learned about it. It just
tells you if there's nothing political involved in it that
we can get outraged about, nobody seems to care. Do

(28:06):
we really care? We should care, but the greater society
apparently just does not. Oh it doesn't affect me. I
don't live in Charlotte. Oh okay, Well, not unusual to
talk about something like this and try to find a
way to make it a local story. News that's out today,
it's trending in our area. Lincoln, Nebraska, two twenty year

(28:29):
olds arrested last night in Lincoln near Woods Park, and
the Lincoln Police Department said just before ten o'clock last
night they went to Woods Park and found a sixty
three year old Lincoln man who was a victim of
these two twenty year olds who essentially mugged him, and

(28:56):
Andrew Dammy was taking to the hospital. Apparently the victim
had met a man on a dating app and they
were planning to meet in a park. And yeah, I mean,
it seems like a complete setup based on the information.

(29:17):
And I don't know if you're using a dating app
to set up a robbery. It's like telling a person, Hey,
I want to meet you in person and it's like
nine o'clock or getting dark in a public park. Now,

(29:39):
this is a sixty three year old guy, and I'm
not saying all sixty three year olds might have, you know,
not excellent judgment and these sort of things. But this
is why they are targets, because they think, why would
anybody do anything the farious to me? Shows up, two
twenty year olds, beat him up, rob him as debit card,

(30:00):
and eventually they're caught and they are arrested. I gotta
tell you low lives, man. I don't. Crime is not
a new thing. This isn't like, oh, how's our world
is just in a terrible place right now. We can
say that because that's recency biased, but it's always been
like this. There have been bad crimes. I mean, you
can say that we feel less safe in our communities

(30:22):
than maybe you did when you were a kid, But
I think when you were a kid, you probably also
should have been locking your door. Still, I never quite
understood the concept of just like leaving your door unlocked
as some sort of like harbinger of the like the
community or your neighborhood around you. It's like, oh, well,

(30:43):
I can unlock my door and leave my door unlocked,
nobody's gonna rob me. I was in small town, Iowa,
a like twenty three, twenty four years old, and I
stupidly trust my neighborhood. You thought you thought I could,
and somebody went through and took my iPod, you know,
and that was a lesson. It's like, Okay, you're not

(31:03):
safe from stuff like that happening anywhere, and you're just
letting people walk to your car like that without it
being locked. You deserve to get yourself stolen. I mean
that's how I talk to myself at least, But live
life skeptical and you just can't feel like you can
give anybody the benefit of the doubt. But that doesn't
mean we should give up on people. And I don't

(31:27):
know how we can do better, but we definitely need
to do better in that and trying to get people
to understand the consequences of what they do.