In a bombshell courtroom twist that’s straight out of a psychological thriller, Decarlos Brown Jr., the deranged suspect with a mile-long rap sheet of mental meltdowns, dropped a jaw-dropping bombshell during his interrogation on September 9th. The 32-year-old drifter, whose eyes darted like a cornered animal under the harsh fluorescent lights of the precinct, leaned forward and whispered words that sent chills down the spines of even the hardest-nosed detectives: “I didn’t want to kill her. I just wanted to talk.”

Talk? About what, you ask? Oh, just the innocent ramblings of a man whose fractured mind painted pretty Iryna Zarutska, the 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant and beloved pizza slinger at Tony’s Trattoria, as the spitting image of an old flame from his days in the loony bin. According to sources close to the investigation – and let’s face it, in a town like this, everyone’s got an ear to the ground – Brown fixated on Iryna’s signature red trench coat, a thrift-store find that he swore was the exact same one he’d glimpsed on a mysterious woman during his stint at Elmwood Psychiatric Hospital back in 2022.

“I saw her on the subway a few times,” Brown allegedly confessed, his voice cracking like dry leaves underfoot. “That coat… it was her. The girl from the ward who smiled at me once. I just needed to know if it was really her. We had a connection, you know? Something real in all that madness.” But what started as a delusional daydream spiraled into a nightmare of steel and screams when Brown cornered Iryna in a dimly lit alley behind the pizzeria after her late-night shift on August 28th. One moment, she was humming a tune from her homeland while fumbling for her keys; the next, she was fighting for her life against a phantom from someone else’s broken past.

The attack was brutal – a frenzy of 17 stab wounds that left Iryna’s once-vibrant body crumpled like discarded takeout boxes. Witnesses heard her cries echoing off the brick walls: “Please, I don’t know you!” But to Brown, huddled in the shadows with a bloodied kitchen knife pilfered from the restaurant’s back door, this wasn’t some random act of violence. No, it was a reunion. A tragic, blood-soaked attempt to reclaim a figment of his imagination.

Cops wasted no time piecing together the puzzle, and what they uncovered is the stuff of true-crime podcasts on steroids. Turns out, Brown’s history isn’t just a footnote; it’s a full-blown horror novel. Diagnosed with severe schizophrenia at age 19, he’s bounced in and out of facilities like a pinball in a rigged machine. Elmwood Psych, just three blocks from Tony’s Trattoria, was his home away from home for six months in ’22, where he racked up complaints for “inappropriate fixation” on female staffers. “He’d sketch them in his notebooks,” one former orderly spilled exclusively to Gossip Gazette. “Romantic doodles, love letters scrawled on napkins. The docs said it was harmless transference, but we all knew better. Guy was a ticking time bomb.”

And tick, tick, tick – it exploded right in Iryna’s path. Surveillance footage from the subway shows Brown lurking on the same 7:15 a.m. F-train for weeks leading up to the attack, his gaze locked on Iryna like a heat-seeking missile. She, oblivious and optimistic as ever, would flash her radiant smile at fellow commuters, her red coat fluttering like a flag of defiance against the city’s gray grind. Little did she know, it was that very splash of color that doomed her.

Detectives hit paydirt when they raided Brown’s squalid studio apartment in a rundown walk-up off 4th Street. Amid the pizza boxes and pill bottles, they found a shrine: crumpled subway maps circled in red marker, blurry Polaroids snapped from afar of Iryna laughing with coworkers, and – get this – a swatch of fabric that matched her coat’s lining, snipped from who-knows-where. “It’s like he was building a love story in his head,” lead investigator Detective Maria Voss told us, her voice laced with barely contained fury. “But love doesn’t bleed like that. This was obsession gone lethal.”

Iryna’s story tugs at every heartstring in this concrete jungle. Fresh off the boat from Kyiv five years ago, she escaped war-torn streets only to meet her end in the so-called “land of opportunity.” By day, she slung slices at Tony’s, charming tipsy patrons with her lilting accent and infectious giggle. “She was the heart of the place,” her boss, Tony Russo, choked out in an emotional sit-down. “Always slipping extra cheese to the kids, sharing stories of borscht and balalaikas. Who does something like this to a girl like her?” Friends remember Iryna as a dreamer, saving every penny for a little flower shop of her own – “Zarutska Blooms,” she’d joke, sketching logos on napkins during slow shifts.

But Brown’s confession peels back layers of tragedy on both sides. Is he a monster, or a man chewed up by a system that spits out the mentally ill like yesterday’s news? Court docs reveal he was discharged from Elmwood with a cocktail of meds he couldn’t afford, wandering the streets like a ghost haunting his own life. “The voices told me she was waiting,” he rambled during questioning, tears streaming down his unshaven face. “I just wanted to say hello. Why did she run?”

Run? Honey, if a shadowy figure in a hoodie lunges at you with a blade glinting under streetlamps, running is the only sane response. Yet, in Brown’s warped worldview, Iryna’s terror was rejection – a final slap from the “ghost” of his psych ward paramour. Psych experts we’ve consulted whisper of “erotomania,” a delusion where the unhinged convince themselves a stranger is secretly pining for them. It’s rare, it’s terrifying, and in this case, it’s painted a city in red.

The ripple effects? Tony’s Trattoria has become a shrine of candles and carnations, locals whispering prayers over half-eaten pies. Iryna’s family, jetting in from Ukraine amid fresh missile alerts back home, clings to memories in a sterile hotel room. “She came here for safety,” her brother Dmitri said through tears, “and found hell instead.” Brown’s arraignment is set for next week, where prosecutors vow to throw the book – first-degree murder, stalking, the works. But whispers in legal circles hint at an insanity plea, turning this into a battle for Brown’s soul… or what’s left of it.