CHARLOTTE — Countless people have seen the picture of Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian immigrant killed on Charlotte’s light rail. But for all of the worldwide coverage of the case, very few people knew who she was.
For the first time, Iryna’s family is telling her story.
Iryna’s mother, sister and uncle sat down with Channel 9’s Hannah Goetz and an interpreter. Their three-hour conversation was powerful and emotional, and it began with the story of the family’s journey out of a war in search of a safer home.
The Escape from Ukraine
Iryna Zarutska’s family is from western Kyiv.
The capital of Ukraine.
And a frequent target of Russian missiles.
An attack last week killed more than a dozen people.
“From the very beginning of the full-scale invasion, there was a lot of pieces of rockets that were coming around us, falling around us,” Anna said through a translator.
“You were scared?” Goetz asked.
“Of course, I was scared, and most of all, I was scared for my children,” Anna said. “For two months, me and children, our family, we had to live in the basement of our building.”
When the war began, so did their plan to get out.
“I just couldn’t stay. I just couldn’t stay in the country where that situation was developing,” Anna said.
Iryna and her younger brother and sister were hesitant to leave their home and their friends.
But to their mother, Charlotte looked like the answer.
“I imagined to myself how safe and tranquil our life would be here,” Anna said.
Iryna already had her art degree and was working.
“For two days, I was following her. I was coming even to her work, and was keeping going at her with that for that decision to be made,” Anna said. “My son also did have no desire to leave.”
“But you had to make a decision as a mother,” Goetz asked.
“It was extremely difficult. I could make. I couldn’t find the right solution, right decision with my kids,” Anna said.
Escaping the war was the only option, but Iryna’s father would have to stay behind. Under martial law, Ukrainian men under 60 aren’t allowed to leave the country.
“After we received an approval to come to the U.S. for two months, we were doubting and thinking back and forth: shall we go or not?” Anna said.
“Why did you make that ultimate decision?” Goetz asked.
“Of course, the safety of my kids,” Anna said.
“Did you hope to find safety in the U.S. here in the Charlotte area?” Goetz asked.
“Yes, definitely,” Anna said.
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The Zarutskas came to Charlotte in 2022 to live with family here. Iryna found work, purpose, and happiness in her new life. She moved into her own apartment in NoDa ... and excitedly gave her mom a tour over a video call.
“She said that she is really, really happy to be there, to live there. She showed mom a painting that she made, a bed, and every and little detail that she was taking care of in that building, and telling mom, I’m so happy to be here. I just like it so much,” Anna recalled.
It was just days after that call, August 22, 2025, when Iryna finished her shift at a South End pizzeria. She boarded the light rail train, heading to her new apartment.
She never made it home.
“In my life, I could have imagined that something like that would have happened,” Anna said.
Who was Iryna Zarutska?
“From a mother’s perspective, tell me about who your daughter was,” Goetz asked.
Anna took a deep breath and paused on the word “was.”
The word, past tense, hurts a mother in any language.
“It’s too painful, too much,” Anna said. “I am very thankful to her that she was in my life. I am telling her that I’m missing her very, very much.”
Iryna was close to her sister, Valeria, and she told Goetz she wants people to remember Iryna for how she lived.
“When I see people, you know, I meet with new people, and they find that I’m her sister, I tell them like, I wish you will know her,” Valeria said. “I wish, like, you know her more than me because she’s a really amazing person.”
Beautiful — inside and out. Iryna cared for pets in her neighborhood, and volunteered at a nursing home. Iryna loved art — she made sculptures for the nursing home residents, and she frequently painted.
″She wanted people to feel joy. She was carrying that. That was part of her life," Iryna’s mom said.
The oldest of three, Iryna made Anna Zarutska a mom.
“Do you remember the moment you found out you were pregnant with her?” Goetz asked.
“It’s indescribable to remember and recognize today how I felt, first touch, first movement. I remember those days,” Anna said. “When the first time they brought her to me, probably about a couple of hours, I was just looking at that face, staring at it.”
Her mother says Iryna never tried to stand out, but it was impossible to ignore her.
“You just couldn’t not notice her; you just couldn’t pass her by. She was a really, really light,” Anna said.
Her father called Iryna a “laugher.”
Her mother called her “Iriski,” after an Eastern European candy.
″Because she was so sweet that you just wanted to hold her, you just wanted to squeeze her, and just not to let her go," Anna said.
Anna’s favorite story of Iryna as a little girl shows the sweet and funny side of her personality.
It’s tradition in their home country for Kindergarten kids to dress up for New Year’s. Girls are usually in sparkles and big dresses. But Iryna had another idea.
“She wanted to be a mouse,” Anna said with a laugh. “She said, ‘Mom, can you make me, draw on me eyebrows that would be angry eyebrows?’”
“In between beautiful snowflakes was a mean mouse that was running around; but she was very happy at that moment. She was very happy,” Anna said.
Iryna’s passion for art also started very young.
“She couldn’t yet walk, but she already drew a flower for me,” Anna said. “Never could have imagined that a little child, such a little child, could already draw and produce something like that.”
She earned a degree in art preservation in Ukraine.
And when she moved to Charlotte, she took inspiration from her new home.
“She helped me to, you know, to look around like, see, you have something beautiful around you,” Valeria said.
“She found the beauty in the world,” Goetz asked.
“Yeah,” Valeria said.
Her younger sister, Valeria, says escaping the war and adapting to a new country was difficult. But she said Iryna helped her see how beautiful their new life could be.
And Iryna wanted to capture it.
“She also showed me some nature around our neighborhood. This was really beautiful, and that’s how she explained to me, you know, I see those colors, those colors, these colors,” Valeria said. “If you see most of the ideas in her art are like colors, she really liked those colors, and I’m pretty sure she saw a couple of these flowers outside. That’s how this idea came to her mind to draw these flowers.”
These paintings are her final pieces. The dreams of her art one day hanging in Charlotte somewhere were cut short.
“I remember when we walked into the lobby in these apartments, she showed me this wall and she said, ‘You see that space right there? My next art will be here.’ That was so amazing,” Anna said.
Iryna’s American Dream
At 23, Iryna Zarutska already escaped more dangers than most people face in a lifetime.
“For most Americans, we don’t experience that. Except for our soldiers, we don’t experience what that’s like, so I don’t know how we can even imagine what they were going through,” said Iryna’s uncle, Frank Scott Haskell. “I couldn’t imagine having to sleep in a basement of your house or wherever to avoid getting blown up.”
The family found safety with Iryna’s aunt and uncle in the Charlotte area, leaving everything they knew behind. Iryna immediately started chasing a new life here.
“She was doing all the right things. She knew she needed to work, she knew she needed to save money, she knew she needed to get a car, all these things, like she knew she had a plan,” Haskell said. “She loved being in America.
Iryna cherished small things some may take for granted — like the ability to be outside and take a picture without hiding from missile strikes.
“She showed me this picture, and what she told me was, ‘Valeria, can you imagine, I probably wouldn’t ever do this picture in Ukraine right now because of what’s happening in Ukraine,’ so it’s, you know. But it’s my favorite picture of her,” Valeria said.
Valeria says Iryna helped her see the beauty in Charlotte too.
“Look, I find some spot here. I find some spot here, and here, and here we can go to,” Valeria recalled Iryna saying. “We like walk around there, do pictures because it’s really beautiful in the evening, on the morning.”
She loved the heart wall in South End, seeing wildflowers on pathways, and her new apartment in Charlotte’s art district, NoDa.
“When she showed me how it looked around from the window, oh my gosh, it’s really beautiful. It’s really beautiful. I feel like I want to live here too,” Valeria said.
Her view on life was infectious.
“She was so very proud of where she was moving, you know, and in her life,” Haskell said.
These are screenshots of texts between Iryna and her uncle Scott from August 14th of last year, one week before her murder.
“She wrote this very lengthy reply about how she had just got promoted and how she was, you know, so happy to be here and how life was going well for her,” Haskell said.
The texts are full of enthusiasm and exclamation marks. She wrote about how excited she was for her upcoming driver’s test and her new promotion. The text messages burst with pride of everything she had accomplished in her three years in the U.S.
“She thanked me for helping her get to that point. And I just replied, I said, ‘Well, I was glad to do it, but you did all the work,’” Haskell said. “She knew, you know, she wanted to better herself.”
She dreamt of a family, a house, and for her art to one day be on display in Charlotte.
“All those dreams were ripped away from her,” Haskell said.
Her American dream was tragically cut short. But even in her death, her family honored her love for her new country.
“When it came time to bury her, the Ukrainian Embassy had reached out and said that they would pay to bring her remains back to Ukraine and so forth. And Anya and the family made the decision that no, she loved America so much that they wanted her remains here,” Haskell said.
The suspect accused in Iryna’s killing, DeCarlos Brown Jr., is in custody for first-degree murder and other charges.
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