In the month since Iryna Zarutska was murdered on a Charlotte, North Carolina, light rail train, the Ukrainian refugee has become an icon of the right.

When the gruesome footage of her murder, in which a large Black man attacked an attractive white victim, was released on September 5 and circulated widely on social media, it unleashed a frenzy of racism, panic, and outlandish claims about the criminal legal system. The fevered response wasn’t steeped in reality but rather in far-right mythology.

Elon Musk went into a rage spiral about Black-on-white crime. Chaya Raichik, the right-wing provocateur behind LibsofTikTok, accused the media of covering up the crime so as not to offend racial justice activists. And numerous right-wing accounts mocked the idea that better mental health care might have anything to do with crime.

The far-right Fox News personality Jesse Waters blamed the murder on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, pointing out that the magistrate who freed Zarutska’s killer was a Black woman “who doesn’t even have a law degree.” And right-wing pundit Jesse Kelly suggested judges and prosecutors be imprisoned themselves when someone they’ve let out of prison goes on to commit another crime.

Elsewhere on Fox, commentator Brian Kilmeade contemplated what to do with homeless, mentally ill people and offered a simple solution: “Just kill them.”

The people screaming most loudly about her death are advocating policies that will do little to stop similar crimes.

Next up, of course, was the White House. President Donald Trump weighed in, with his typically calm and diplomatic demeanor.

Following the murder of Charlie Kirk on September 10, Zarutska become paired with Kirk in right-wing media as a martyr to an imaginary, soft-on-crime left. Trump has continued to post memes and images of Zarutska on his Truth Social platform in the weeks since.

This furor has also turned into legislative action. On Wednesday, the North Carolina state legislature passed a bill, “Iryna’s Law,” which would limit cashless bail, reinforce the ability to involuntarily commit people on the basis of mental health, and open the door to restarting executions in the state.

Every murder is a tragedy. Zarutska’s murder was horrific, brutal, and heartbreaking, particularly given that she had come to the U.S. from Ukraine to seek safety from the war.

Her murder, however, is not a common sort of crime, and it is not indicative of any larger trend. The people screaming most loudly about her death are advocating policies that will do little to stop similar crimes from happening again.

© The Intercept