Protesters gather outside federal hearing on Zarutska stabbing in Charlotte

About 80 people gathered outside the Charles R. Jonas Federal Building on Monday morning as lawmakers prepared to discuss violent crime inside and a drone watched from the sky.

Members of Congress came to Charlotte for a field hearing following the killing of Iryna Zarutska on Charlotte’s light rail last month. Zarutska, 23, died on the train after DeCarlos Brown Jr. stabbed her in the neck, police said. Her death drew outrage across the country and raised familiar questions about the criminal justice and mental health systems.

Progressive and religious groups, including Indivisible Charlotte and the Poor People’s Campaign, organized Monday’s protest. Speakers described the hearing as politically-motivated and said real solutions would focus more on mental health and funding the criminal justice system, among other things.

“If we’re serious about preventing what happened to this young woman... then we need to work together to address this holistically,” Rep. Alma Adams, who is from Charlotte, said to the crowd just before the hearing began. “We’ve got to hire more prosecutors, public defenders to address the backlog of cases that are piling up in our courts.”

There are other needs, she said: expanded healthcare, police with the resources to help people in crisis and more.

“Anything less than that is disrespecting Iryna’s memory,” Adams said.

Republicans “shamelessly” politicized Zarutska’s death, Adams said.

The Rev. Rodney Sadler shared many of those sentiments and cautioned against violence being the excuse for a rising “militarized state.”

“May we work together to end the hatred,” said Sadler, who recently announced he is running for a Mecklenburg-based seat in the state House of Representatives. “May we work together to transform systems fueled by the ideology of hatred into systems built on notions of love.”

Before the speeches, demonstrators held up signs to passing traffic with slogans like “EXECUTE JUSTICE NOT PEOPLE” and “NO TROOPS IN CHARLOTTE.”

One heckler tried to interrupt speakers but was spoken over by them and largely ignored.

Ryan Oehrli covers criminal justice in the Charlotte region for The Charlotte Observer. His work is produced with financial support from the nonprofit The Just Trust. The Observer maintains full editorial control of its journalism.