Michael Whatley – Whatley falsely accuses Cooper of bearing ‘direct responsibility’ for Charlotte stabbing

Republicans are trying to blame North Carolina’s former governor for policies that, they say, enabled a fatal stabbing on Charlotte’s rail system. 

DeCarlos Brown Jr. faces state and federal murder charges in the death of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian who moved to Charlotte in 2022 after Russia invaded her home country. Video of the Charlotte attack shows a man with a knife rising from his seat on a light-rail train and then slashing the neck of Zarutska, who was sitting in the row in front of him. Police later identified the assailant as Brown.

The video prompted calls to action from a wide range of officials, with many Republicans — including President Donald Trump — pointing the finger at former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat who’s running for North Carolina’s open U.S. Senate seat. 

Among the strongest accusations came from Michael Whatley, a Trump-backed Republican running for the seat. 

“DeCarlos Brown Jr., a dangerous career criminal, should have been behind bars years ago, but my opponent Roy Cooper’s lenient 2020 executive order kept him on the streets, endangering communities. In June 2020, Cooper signed a soft-on-crime executive order, and just three months later, Brown was released from prison,” Whatley said in a Sept. 6 X post^[1].

Whatley went on to say that Brown was arrested and released three additional times between 2021 and 2025, taking “full advantage of Cooper’s weak policies.”

“Cooper bears direct responsibility for this heinous act and must answer to the public about why he prioritizes criminals over public safety,” Whatley’s post concluded. 

Asked for evidence that Cooper “bears direct responsibility” in the killing, Whatley’s campaign cited a task force Cooper created^[2] in 2020 that recommended changes to the criminal justice system, such as implementing cashless bail. Cooper told the group at the time that he looked forward to implementing their recommendations. 

“And just three short months after Cooper made that pledge to implement these soft-on-crime policies, violent offender DeCarlos Brown Jr. was back on the streets, looking for his next victim,” said Jonathan Felts, a Whatley campaign spokesperson.

Brown was released from prison in 2020. However, PolitiFact found no evidence that the task force or its recommendations played a role in Brown’s release that year or earlier this year. He had served his full sentence at the time of his 2020 release. 

Daniel Roberts, a lawyer for Brown, didn’t respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment. WCNC reported^[3] Sept. 10 that Roberts released a statement saying that he planned to limit his public statements, citing an ethics code.

Release after armed robbery conviction

Brown has been arrested at least 14 times, most between 2011 and 2014. PolitiFact’s North Carolina partner, WRAL News, reported on Brown’s record^[4] over that period.

For most of that time, Republican Pat McCrory was governor, Cooper was attorney general, and Republican Andrew Murray was the local district attorney.

Court records show Murray’s office dismissed several charges against Brown during that period — including for communicating threats — but that he also was convicted of several other crimes. A 2013 guilty plea for shoplifting brought no prison time. Neither did a conviction for breaking and entering and larceny. The latter charge, though, landed Brown on probation, which he violated by committing an armed robbery, according to court records.

Armed robbery is a Class D felony, which can carry a sentence of 13 years in prison^[5], depending on a defendant’s criminal record. Brown pleaded guilty to robbery with a dangerous weapon in 2014. A judge sentenced him to more than six years in prison, and Murray’s office dropped a related charge of possession of a firearm by a felon. 

Brown got credit for 176 days in jail while awaiting trial and then served five-and-a-half years in prison, police and court records^[6] show. Brown then had one year of post-release supervision after prison, which ended in September 2021.

Whatley’s campaign noted that Brown was released in September, three months after Cooper created^[7] the state Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice^[8]. 

But the report had no bearing on Brown’s release from prison.

Brown served 100% of his sentence and was not released early or paroled, the North Carolina Department of Adult Correction told PolitiFact. And the task force didn’t publish its recommendations^[9] until December 2020 — three months after Brown had already been released. 

Most recent release

Whatley’s post said that Brown has been arrested and released additional times since 2021, and that Brown was “taking full advantage of Cooper’s weak policies.” 

The task force’s report called on the criminal justice system to eliminate cash bail and promote alternatives to arrest. But the report’s recommendations were nonbinding. Most of the recommendations would have required the Republican-controlled state Legislature to enact them, and lawmakers did not.

Further, North Carolina governors don’t have any power over who goes to prison. They have some power over who gets out because they can issue pardons or commutations. Cooper, who was governor from 2017 through 2024, did no such thing for Brown.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police arrested Brown three times between 2022 and 2024, but none of those arrests led to charges, WBTV reported^[10]. 

Tracey Brown, the suspect’s sister, told CNN^[11] that Brown bit her and broke the hinges of a door in 2022, but that she did not seek charges. She said Brown had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and suffered hallucinations and paranoia, and that the family hoped to get him psychiatric help.

In January, Brown was arrested and charged with misusing the 911 emergency dispatch system and released without bail on the promise to appear in court. It’s common for courts to release someone without requiring them to post bail when the charge involved is a nonviolent misdemeanor. 

Misusing the 911 system is a Class 1 misdemeanor^[12] that carries a maximum penalty of 120 days in jail, state sentencing documents^[13] show. So even if Brown had been given the maximum sentence in January, the sentence likely would have ended before Aug. 22, the day Brown is alleged to have stabbed Zarutska. 

Court records show that Brown’s trial in the 911 case was postponed on multiple occasions. A March hearing was continued for “case management.” In June, the defense filed a motion for Brown to undergo a forensic evaluation. The judge granted the order on July 29. Queen City News reported^[14] that, despite the order, Brown was never evaluated.

Whatley joined North Carolina legislative leaders for a Sept. 11 press briefing in Raleigh about the stabbing, where he again said Cooper’s policies “allowed attacks like that on Iryna.”

At the briefing, a reporter asked Senate Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, which of the task force’s recommendations contributed to Zarutska’s death. Berger didn’t provide an answer. Instead, he noted that the recommendations had been posted on the internet and could have been used as a reference point for judges and magistrates. 

The task force recommendations “reflect an attitude on policing, an attitude on criminal justice, an attitude on how things ought to be taking place,” Berger said. “And those attitudes, in many respects, are the things that inform the kinds of decisions that were made by the magistrate in this case and by other magistrates that are of the same political ilk.”

PolitiFact asked the Mecklenburg County judicial district whether the magistrate who released Brown used the task force’s recommendations as a guide. North Carolina Judicial Branch policy discourages the courts from commenting on active cases, said Natalie McKinney, a spokesperson for the district. 

She added: “As it relates to bond determinations and pretrial release, generally, the Judges and Magistrates in the 26th Judicial District operate according to the U.S. Constitution, North Carolina Constitution, North Carolina General Statutes and local policy.”

Neither Berger nor Whatley produced any evidence that the magistrate consulted the task force’s recommendations before releasing Brown after his January arrest. 

Our ruling

Whatley said Cooper “bears direct responsibility” for the murder of Zarutska.

Cooper was not involved in Brown’s case in January, when he was released after his arrest for misusing the 911 system. 

Whatley’s campaign cited the recommendations of a task force Cooper created in 2020 — the same year Brown was released from prison for armed robbery.

But the task force didn’t release its recommendations until after Brown had already been released from prison. And the state’s correction system said Brown served his full term; he wasn’t released early or paroled. 

Further, the task force’s report is merely a set of recommendations. The report’s call to introduce cashless bail is nonbinding, and there’s no evidence it played a role in Brown’s release from jail while awaiting trial for charges that he misused the 911 system.

We rate the claim False.