Tag: north carolina

‘Be still’: State trooper punched disabled man he knew was suffering a seizure, dragged him across concrete, lawsuit says

A man has sued a North Carolina state trooper for allegedly punching and dragging him across concrete after suffering an epileptic seizure that apparently caused him to crash his car.

Thomas Simmons, who says he suffers from epilepsy, is accusing Sgt. Ashley Smith with the North Carolina State Highway Patrol of disability-based discrimination, using excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and even falsely indicating he was driving impaired.

Simmons was 44 years old when, on May 25, 2024, he was driving a car on Highway 33 in Greenville as part of his job delivering items to customers for Walmart. According to the lawsuit, he began having an epileptic seizure, lost consciousness and control, sideswiped another car and crashed into a utility pole.

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A witness called 911, and Smith responded to the scene. When he got there, a witness told the officer that the driver, Simmons, “appeared to be having a seizure,” per the lawsuit. Greenville police officers also responded to the crash site.

Smith is said to have made statements “indicating he understood” Simmons was suffering from a seizure, such as, “Notify Greenville PD, I believe somebody advised that the subject’s possibly having a seizure.” When a bystander told Smith, “He’s seizing,” after Smith stepped out of his vehicle, the trooper replied with the same words, “He’s seizing,” per the lawsuit.

Furthermore, according to Simmons, Smith requested the man’s hospital records the next month. In his report, Smith wrote that when he found Simmons, he “was slumped over and appeared to be suffering from what I originally thought was a seizure or medical condition based on what witnesses on scene were telling me and what I was observing from him.”

Smith approached Simmons’ car and saw him “convulsing inside his vehicle,” leading him to break the front passenger-side window and attempt to make contact with the man. “Hey brother, you alright? S—t. Hey man, be still, brother. Be still,” he reportedly said.

However, when Smith backed away — despite not noticing any drugs in the vehicle — he told onlookers, “Looks like a drug problem. Y’all step on back,” per the lawsuit, which stated Simmons was incapacitated, moaning and crying unintelligibly.

“Hey man, what’s your name, brother?” Smith reportedly asked, again attempting to communicate with Simmons. He managed to get the door open, prompting Simmons to “woozily” rise to his feet. Smith apparently did not like that.

“Don’t get out,” he allegedly said. “Hey, I’m gonna hurt you, man.” The trooper is said to have repeated this threat as Simmons “did not respond” to his commands, and after the second time, Smith “delivered a forceful, closed fist strike directly to Plaintiff’s face,” the lawsuit states.

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Former Friend of North Carolina Shooter Says He Tried to Warn People Suspect Was Suffering Mentally: ‘This Was 100 Percent Predictable’

As the Gateway Pundit reported over the weekend, a young man named Nigel Max Edge was arrested and charged with three counts of first degree murder after opening fire on the American Fish Company restaurant dock in the North Carolina coastal town of Southport.

Edge is a Marine veteran who served in Iraq. Unfortunately, he was battling some personal demons.

One of his former friends is now speaking out and saying that he tried to get help for the man and that his warnings to authorities went unheeded.

It’s a tragic reminder that we have a serious mental health crisis in the country right now.

RedState reported:

We’re learning more about Sean DeBevoise, a/k/a Nigel Edge, the man suspected of killing three people and injuring many others in Southport, North Carolina on Saturday night, from a post one of his best friends made to Facebook on Sunday.

DeBevoise, a Purple Heart recipient, is a Marine sniper who served in combat in Iraq and was severely injured. Since that time he has had major mental health issues, and according to Marc Simmons’ post, DeBevoise had been “diagnosed with delusional disorder, after a short stay in a mental hospital.” Simmons and his wife, who’d asked DeBevoise to be their son’s godfather, distanced themselves from him around 2019, when DeBevoise’s “paranoia grew.”

A few years later, DeBevoise showed up at Simmons’ workplace and accused him of being part of conspiracies against him. Simmons eventually got a no contact order and “notified the courts that this was a person that was not only mentally ill, but was also a trained SNIPER and steps should be taken and taken serious.”

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North Carolina looks to bar cashless bail for violent suspects after fatal light-rail stabbing

North Carolina legislators advanced a new bill seeking to rein in the state’s cashless bail policies on Monday, following last month’s deadly stabbing on the Charlotte light rail train in which an ex-convict is accused of killing a Ukrainian war refugee.

State Sen. Danny Britt, a Republican whose district includes Hoke, Robeson and Scotland counties, told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the bill essentially gets rid of written promises by violent defendants to appear at future court dates.

Instead, it requires judges only to allow those defendants out of jail on secured bonds, house arrest or some other kind of electronic monitoring, depending on their criminal history.

The bill also would task judges with justifying the release conditions they set — or risk suspension.

Lawmakers in Raleigh voted to move the bill to the Senate Committee on Rules and Operations.

The proposal, dubbed “Iryna’s Law,” is named for Iryna Zarutska, the 23-year-old refugee whose caught-on-camera stabbing death on a light rail train was so alarming that President Trump said her killer should be executed.

“Iryna should still be alive. She should be thriving and enjoying time with her family and friends,” Senate Leader Phil Berger, a Republican representing Guilford and Rockingham counties, said in a press release. “We cannot let North Carolina be held hostage by woke, weak-on-crime policies and court officials who prioritize criminals over justice for victims. We are also taking steps to revive the death penalty for those who commit the most heinous crimes.”

The Ukrainian woman’s slaying has also become a hot topic in the battleground state’s U.S. Senate race next year.

Republican candidate Michael Whatley said former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat running for Senate, bears “direct responsibility” for the deadly attack on Zarutska because of a commission he created in June 2020 to address racial inequity in the criminal justice system.

The panel’s unveiling occurred weeks following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

But Mr. Cooper’s campaign said Mr. Whatley, a recent Republican National Committee chairman, was lying about the task force. The former governor’s campaign further said that Mr. Cooper signed a 2023 law that toughened pretrial release rules.

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Deranged Leftist Tries to Kill Elderly North Carolina Man Over Trump Banner

More left-wing political violence.

A leftist ripped down a North Carolina business owner’s Trump banner and tried to kill him.

On September 6, a deranged leftist pulled over his vehicle and ripped down a pro-Trump banner hanging on a sign near one of the business owner’s buses.

Mark Thomas, the owner of Paddle Inn Rafting Company, said he saw the suspect on surveillance video rip down the Trump banner, so he went outside and fired his rifle as a warning.

“He walked up to the sign. When he stood up at the sign I though ‘I can’t believe this’,” Thomas said told Fox Carolina. “I watched him until he reached up and pulled the sign down. It’s just a shock.”

“I let him know that somebody’s watching him and didn’t appreciate it,” Thomas added.

The suspect is then caught on surveillance video sticking a firearm out of the sunroof of a green Jeep Grand Cherokee and firing toward Mark Thomas.

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The Monster Speaks: Decarlos Brown Jr. Breaks His Silence, Gives an Insane Excuse Why He Murdered Ukrainian Refugee Iryna Zarutska in Cold Blood 

The monster who killed a young woman who arrived in America from her war-torn nation has broken his silence, and his excuse for what happened should infuriate any reasonable person.

As The Gateway Pundit reported, 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska was brutally murdered last month by a low-life thug in Charlotte, North Carolina, who had no business walking free to begin with. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department revealed Zarutska suffered multiple stab wounds and was pronounced dead at the East/West Boulevard light rail station at 10 P.M. ET on August 22.

Police identified 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr. as the person responsible for Zarutska’s death. He has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder.

On Friday, WBTV obtained shocking surveillance video showing how Brown committed his horrendous act of violence. Additional footage in recent days has also leaked online, revealing an even more gruesome and evil attack.

During a phone call with his sister, which was shared with the Daily Mail, Brown offered this excuse for what happened: he claimed that he had no control over what happened because the federal government put material in his body.

Knowing her brother was off his rocker, she demanded why he picked Zarutska out of everyone. Brown could only say that the material lashed out at her.

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Psycho Charlotte train suspect reveals motive for slaughtering Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska —  as he offers chilling words from jail

Accused killer Decarlos Brown Jr. told his family he stabbed Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska to death on board a train in Charlotte, North Carolina, because he believed she was reading his mind, his sister has claimed — as his chilling words from jail are revealed.

Tracey Brown, who was assaulted by her older brother in a 2022 attack that saw him bite her and break a door, said he is a paranoid schizophrenic who told her multiple times that the government had implanted a chip in him.

“A person that is hearing voices in their head and believes the world is against them, they’re going to break. And I think that night he broke,” she told CNN.

Disturbing audio of Brown’s phone conversation with his sister from jail captures his rambling explanation for why he attacked the innocent woman. Brown can be heard telling his sister that “the material in his body” — not he — had killed Iryna, according to audio from a call made on Aug. 28, six days after the murder, and shared with the Daily Mail.

“I hurt my hand, stabbing her. I don’t even know the lady. I never said not one word to the lady at all. That’s scary, ain’t it. Why would somebody stab somebody for no reason?” Brown is heard saying.

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Ignored by media, enabled by Dems: how soft-on-crime policies unleashed murder of Ukrainian refugee

According to most legacy mainstream news outfits, the horrific murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska was not worthy of a headline. The attention from “MAGA influencers seeking to elevate the issue of violent urban crime and accuse mainstream media of under-covering” is instead the focal point of reporting by outlets like Axios. 

On August 22, Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who escaped war to start anew in the U.S., was viciously stabbed to death with a pocket knife in what appeared to be a random attack on a Charlotte, North Carolina light rail train. The suspect, 34-year-old Decarlos Brown Jr., a homeless black man with a long history of evading serious charges due to mental health claims, was apprehended and charged with first-degree murder, fueling public outrage over lax crime policies and judicial failures.

The media blackout was shocking to many in the independent news sphere. The murder took place two and a half weeks ago, on August 22. CNN, Reuters, The New York Times, Associated Press, NBC News, ABC News and The Washington Post took 17 days to report on it. It took North Carolina’s Democrat Mayor Josh Stein the same amount of time to comment on the murder. 

Leftists try to flush Zarutska’s murder down the memory-hole

Wikipedia is under fire for trying to remove a page about the murder. Editors at the site are feuding internally after attempts to suppress the story by proposing the newly created page about Zarutska’s killing be deleted, arguing it lacked sufficient notability for inclusion.

Critics, including Elon Musk, who called the murder a “hate crime,” and Piers Morgan, who condemned the “senseless, unprovoked” murder, have slammed Wikipedia’s deletion attempt as censorship, pointing to minimal mainstream media attention. 

The radio-silence from traditional media up until Monday reflects a broader attempt to ignore crime when the victim is white and the alleged perpetrator is black. 

In another instance over the weekend, beloved Auburn University veterinary sciences professor Dr. Julie Gard Schnuelle was hacked to death with a machete while walking her dog in Kiesel Park, Alabama—a location she frequented daily. The 59-year-old retired professor’s red Ford F-150 truck was stolen by the attacker. The following day, a black male, 28-year-old Harold Rashad Dabney III from Montgomery, was arrested and charged with capital murder after police located the stolen vehicle nearby and linked him to the homicide.

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A Woman Is Murdered, And The Media Rush To Defend Democrats By Calling It ‘Political’

Here’s a truly jaw-dropping headline in Politico this week: “Ukrainian refugee killed in North Carolina gets dragged into political messaging war.”

Now let’s reimagine that same headline but the year is 2020 and it’s about George Floyd getting “dragged into [a] political messaging war,” as if we weren’t talking about a greatly disturbing death caught on video but a trifling partisan squabble. Of course no such headline would have ever made it to print, because the dying news media were all in on turning Floyd into a national crisis with President Trump to blame.

By contrast, the appalling murder of a “Ukrainian refugee” in Charlotte last month — her name was Iryna Zarutska — is a really, really bad look for all the Democrats (plus the dying media) who spent recent days swearing on their lives that metropolitan crime is virtually nonexistent. They did that purely out of spite for Trump sending National Guard troops into Washington, D.C., to quell the violence and danger that has plagued that city for years.

Look, The New York Times did it, too: “A Gruesome Murder in North Carolina Ignites a Firestorm on the Right.” So did the Washington Post and Associated Press: “Charlotte leaders criticized over killing of Ukrainian woman as Trump, MAGA target another Dem city.”

Remember, kids, there is no crime! And when there is, it’s Republicans and “the right” you should hate for noticing!

They’re losing this little game they’re trying to play, but they’re so dug in on opposing every single thing Trump does that they’re willing to literally watch people die and call it nothing. It’s one thing for them to scream bloody murder when their precious “foreign aid” is put on hiatus, but it’s seriously ghoulish for them to dismiss an actual murder as a Republican fixation.

This is how Democrats and the dying media are going to deal with the crime problem for the foreseeable future. They don’t care about the tragic murder of Iryna Zarutska, and they’re willing to risk all of our lives to seize power again.

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NC GOPs Demand Firing of Judge Who Freed Accused Murderer of Ukraine Refugee

North Carolina’s Republican House delegation is demanding the firing of the judge who freed the accused murderer of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska.

Each one of North Carolina’s ten House Republican members signed the letter calling for formal proceedings for Magistrate Judge Teresa Stokes’ removal after she released the accused, Decarlos Brown, in January 2025 “based solely on his ‘written promise’ to appear for a future court date.”

The letter states that he was released “despite Brown’s extensive criminal history, which included at least 14 prior arrests for serious offenses such as possession of a firearm by a felon, robbery with a dangerous weapon, and physical assault of his sister.”

Brown could have been held or required to post bail on a misdemeanor charge involving a 911 call where he demanded the police investigate “man-made” materials that he claimed were controlling him from inside his body.

The letter states:

Ms. Zarutska’s murder was not only a profound personal tragedy but also a direct result of a failure of judicial responsibility. By releasing a repeat violent offender on nothing more than his written promise to appear, Magistrate Stokes displayed a willful failure to perform the duties of her office and engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.

The letter, addressed to Roy H. Wiggins, Chief Judge, North Carolina Judicial District 26, says, “[W]e urge you to commence formal removal proceedings against Magistrate Teresa Stokes. We further request that the Court conduct a thorough review of her prior bond determinations to assess the full extent of misconduct.”

Zarutska was only 23 and sitting innocently on a light rail train in Democrat-run Charlotte, North Carolina, on the night of August 22. Surveillance video shows the man authorities say is Decarlos Brown standing unprovoked, looming over her, removing a pocket knife, and opening it. Police say he then fatally stabbed her in the neck three times. The video then shows the alleged murderer walking through the train with blood dripping from his hand. There are reports, not yet verified, that the alleged killer says, “I got that white girl.”

If true, Brown could face hate crime charges.

The F.B.I. is investigating the brutal, senseless, and — most tragic of all — preventable attack.

Brown’s history demanded that he be in prison or institutionalized. He was obviously comfortable with violence and had no regard for the consequences of his actions. Why would he? He had gotten away with it so many times.

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Charlotte Dem. mayor faces backlash after urging for ‘compassion’ for suspect who brutally stabbed Ukrainian refugee

Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles is facing criticism after urging compassion for the man accused of fatally stabbing a female Ukrainian refugee on a train in August.

The murder of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee who recently moved to the United States to escape the war, has garnered significant outrage on social media after emerging last week due to the gruesome and unprovoked nature of the attack.

The violent stabbing took place on the Lynx Blue Line train in Charlotte, North Carolina, on August 22nd after Zarutska unknowingly sat in front of the suspect, 35-year-old Decarlos Brown.

Lyles has since responded to the attack, calling on the community to treat Brown with “compassion” due to his apparent struggle with “homelessness and mental health.”

“This is a tragic situation that sheds light on problems with society safety nets related to mental healthcare and the systems that should be in place,” Lyles wrote in a statement to a local reporter after the attack.

Lyles went on to claim that Brown “appears to have suffered a crisis” during the attack, while explaining that “we will never arrest our way out [of] issues such as homelessness and mental health.”

The Democrat mayor continued, noting that Brown, an apparent homeless individual, “needs to be treated with the same compassion, diligence and commitment as cancer and heart disease.”

Lyles added that she is not participating in “villainizing those who struggle with their mental health or those who are unhoused.”

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump slammed the suspect as a “mentally deranged lunatic” and a “well-known career criminal, who had been previously arrested and released on CASHLESS BAIL in January, a total of 14 TIMES.”

The president issued his outrage over the murder in a Monday Truth Social post, criticizing Democrat policies for directly allowing the suspect to roam the streets despite repeated arrests.

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