Vice President JD Vance weighed into debate about the North Carolina stabbing death of a young Ukrainian immigrant with an inflammatory comparison to another public transit killing, suggesting tentative support for vigilantism.
“Daniel Penny prevented this from happening on a NYC subway,” Vance wrote alongside a still image of a mortally injured Iryna Zarutska.
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“Instead of thanking him, many hated him for it,” Vance said.
The 2023 subway incident sparked intense debate over the way that Penny, a white marine veteran, justified putting a homeless Black man, Jordan Neely, in a fatal chokehold because he had been acting erratically, responding to a mental health crisis with deadly violence.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, Zarutska was attacked after choosing a seat on a train in late August, wearing the uniform of a local pizza parlor. Security camera footage shows a man sitting directly behind her suddenly stand, raise an arm, and slash her neck and upper torso. She covers her face as she loses consciousness.
Authorities arrested and charged Decarlos Brown Jr. with the crime, describing him as a homeless man with a history of mental health issues. A local news outlet reported that Brown’s mother took him for psychiatric evaluation and found he had schizophrenia after he began to display more violent tendencies.
The death of a blond 23-year-old at the hands of a Black man with a criminal history has ignited a firestorm among conservatives in favor of President Donald Trump’s harsh crackdown on crime in major metropolitan areas, with supporters argue in favor of putting more people behind bars for longer.
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Trump, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and other allies have spent days calling attention to Zarutska, using her death as proof that U.S. cities are too dangerous — and ignoring statistics that show violent crime is down in many places around the country.
The New York incident became instantly controversial due to questions about whether Neely had truly been a threat to anyone, or whether Penny made unfair assumptions about him. Neely had been speaking aggressively, some witnesses said, but had not attacked anyone.
Penny was eventually acquitted by a New York jury.
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