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Iryna Zarutska murder: US professor recalls being ambushed by masked gunman on train, ‘He watched me begin to cry…’
Amid widespread discussion about the murder of Iryna Zarutska, a Northwestern University professor has opened up about a traumatic experience he had on a train.
Amid widespread discussion about the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska by career criminal Decarlos Brown Jr., a Northwestern University professor has opened up about a traumatic experience he had on a train in 2021. Stephen Kleinschmit revealed in an X post that he was “on the @CTA Blue Line when a man dressed in all-black and a shiesty mask walked between the train cars, reached into his backpack, and put a handgun to my head.”
“He didn't rob me, he watched me begin to cry, laughed, then went to the next car. I was almost one of those stories they publish on page 5 of the Tribune, where you go "oh that's too bad" and quickly forget. It is emotionally scarring for even the strongest person,” Kleinschmit added.
Brown ambushed and stabbed Zarutska to death on a Charlotte light rail train days after she fled her war-torn home to seek safety in the United States. He has now been charged with first-degree murder. It has been revealed that he was arrested several times in the past since 2011 for felony larceny, robbery with a dangerous weapon, and communicating threats, according to court records obtained by the New York Post.
Read More | 'If Daniel Penny had been there...': Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska’s murder on NC train sparks debate
‘This is the reality of living in downtown Chicago’
Kleinschmit revealed in his post that he still has “anxiety attacks” whenever “someone walks between cars.” He said that he never reported the incident because he was certain that Kim Foxx, Former Cook County State's Attorney, would do nothing about it. “I absolutely do not trust the city's crime statistics. Crimes go unreported, are misclassified in the data, or perhaps even omitted altogether,” Kleinschmit wrote.
Kleinschmit added, “This is the reality of living in downtown Chicago, and just one of several violent incidents I have witnessed or narrowly escaped. The massive gang fight in the Jackson Red Line tunnel, the youth that beat up and robbed and an elderly man on the Red Line, the mentally ill man that forced himself on a woman before myself and another passenger physically threw him off the train. I have a dozen more, both disturbing and disgusting, but you get the drift. The transit system is the primary mechanism for spreading crime throughout the city, yet security is nearly totally absent.”
Kleinschmit said that nearly everyone living in Chicago, that he knows, has similar stories. “Many people in my building do not leave after sundown, and talk of all the things they "used to do at night" 15-20 years ago,” he wrote. “Our city could be so much better, but we choose to live like this. This mayoral administration, like the ones that preceded it, punishes good people and rewards the bad. We have come to believe this is normal and must submit to random terror in the name of "social justice."”
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He added, “Chicago is a low trust society that does not have the appropriate social norms to self-regulate its behavior. Hundreds of billions of dollars of public investment over the last few decades have failed to yield anything but the most marginal gains in quality of life, and in many ways (educational performance particularly) are demonstrably worse. Almost every single municipality in the United States obtains much better policy outcomes with a far smaller tax burden and per-capita program expenditures.”
Kleinschmit said that the only way to improve the condition in Chicago is “a broad cultural reset.” “Send in the FBI and National Guard, hire more CPD, do not parole violent offenders, break the gangs. Removing the class of hyperviolent criminals and repeat offenders from society will fuel safety, growth and prosperity the likes which many in the city has never experienced,” he wrote.
