In a revelation that has left an entire community reeling, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department investigators have disclosed the contents of a poignant, unsent text message discovered on the smartphone of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska. The message, composed just minutes before she was brutally stabbed to death on a crowded light rail train last month, consists of a mere six words directed to her boyfriend of nearly a year. “I can’t wait to build our future together,” the note reads – a simple, hopeful declaration that now serves as a devastating epitaph to a young life full of promise, cut short in an act of inexplicable violence.

The disclosure, shared during a press briefing on Thursday afternoon, has amplified the already widespread grief surrounding Zarutska’s murder. As Detective Maria Gonzalez, lead investigator on the case, held up a blurred screenshot of the message for reporters, her voice cracked with emotion. “This wasn’t just a random draft on her phone,” Gonzalez said. “It was Iryna’s last thought, typed out with love and anticipation, never to be sent. It’s a window into her heart, and it’s breaking ours all over again.” The special person on the receiving end? Stas Nikulytsia, Zarutska’s devoted partner, who has been left shattered, grappling with the what-ifs of a shared tomorrow that will never come.

Zarutska’s story, one of resilience amid unimaginable hardship, had already captured national attention following the release of chilling surveillance footage from the attack on August 22. But this latest detail transforms her tragedy from a statistic of urban violence into a deeply personal narrative of lost dreams and unspoken love. For those who knew her – from her coworkers at the bustling Zepeddies Pizzeria in uptown Charlotte to her extended family scattered across continents – the message is a gut-wrenching reminder of the vibrant woman she was: optimistic, fiercely independent, and always looking ahead.

Born in the heart of Kyiv, Ukraine, on a crisp autumn day in 2001, Iryna Zarutska grew up in a modest apartment block overlooking the Dnipro River. Her childhood was marked by the rhythms of a city alive with history and culture – summers spent picking wildflowers in nearby parks, winters huddled around her grandmother’s stories of Soviet-era defiance. But as the eldest of three siblings, Iryna quickly learned the weight of responsibility. With parents Anna and Stanislav juggling factory jobs to make ends meet, she became the family’s unofficial caretaker, helping raise her younger sister Valeriia and brother Bohdan while excelling in school. Teachers remembered her as a girl with “eyes like the Black Sea – deep and unyielding,” always top of her class in literature and biology, harboring dreams of becoming a veterinarian to heal the world’s wounded animals.

War shattered that idyllic world on February 24, 2022, when Russian missiles rained down on Kyiv. Iryna, then 20, was in a bomb shelter with her family when the first explosions echoed through the streets. “The ground shook like the devil himself was knocking,” her uncle Mykola later recounted in a tearful interview from his home in suburban Raleigh, where the family had briefly reunited after fleeing. Amid the chaos of air raid sirens and rationed bread, Iryna’s resolve hardened. She volunteered at makeshift clinics, bandaging cuts on neighbors’ children and distributing blankets to the elderly. But as the invasion dragged on, with friends vanishing into the front lines and her father’s factory reduced to rubble, the Zarutskas made the agonizing decision to seek asylum abroad.

Their escape was a harrowing odyssey. Smuggled across borders in the dead of night, they traversed Romania and Poland before boarding a flight to the United States, landing in New York in August 2022 with little more than backpacks and broken Ukrainian. Sponsored by distant relatives, they settled in North Carolina’s Research Triangle, a region buzzing with opportunity for refugees. Iryna’s uncle Mykola and his wife Olena opened their modest ranch-style home to the family, providing a fragile sense of stability. “She arrived scared but smiling,” Mykola said. “Iryna told me on her first night, ‘Uncle, America isn’t a dream – it’s a chance. And I’m going to grab it with both hands.'”

True to her word, Iryna dove headfirst into her new life. Enrolling in English classes at Central Piedmont Community College, she balanced studies with a job at an assisted living facility in Huntersville, where she charmed residents with her gentle accent and endless patience. “She’d sit with Mrs. Jenkins for hours, reading poetry in broken English,” recalled coworker Sofia Ramirez. “Iryna said animals and old people don’t judge your grammar – they just see your soul.” By early 2024, she’d moved to Zepeddies Pizzeria, starting as a hostess but quickly earning promotion to line cook through sheer grit. Her signature Ukrainian-inspired twist on the menu – a borscht-infused pizza sauce – became a quiet hit among regulars.

It was at the pizzeria that Iryna met Stas Nikulytsia, a 25-year-old software engineer from Lviv who had arrived in Charlotte a year earlier. Their connection was instant, sparked over a shared shift during a chaotic Friday rush. Stas, with his easy laugh and knack for fixing the ancient pizza oven, reminded Iryna of home – not the war-torn version, but the one of folk songs and family feasts. “He was my anchor,” Iryna confided to her sister Valeriia in a late-night call last spring. They bonded over weekend hikes in the Blue Ridge Mountains, dreaming aloud about opening a farm together one day – a place for rescue dogs and borscht workshops. Stas taught her to drive, patient through her white-knuckled grips on the wheel, and together they saved for her first car, a used Honda Civic she planned to christen “Freedom.”

By summer 2025, Iryna’s American dream was blooming. She’d aced her English finals, secured an internship shadowing vets at a local clinic, and even started a small Instagram account (@IrynaInTheUSA) chronicling her adventures – from her first baseball game to a Fourth of July barbecue where she burned the hot dogs but laughed it off. “Life here isn’t perfect,” she posted in July, a selfie beaming from a sun-dappled park bench. “But it’s mine. And that’s enough.” Unbeknownst to her followers, behind the smiles was a quiet homesickness, tempered by the steady rhythm of her routine: early mornings at the pizzeria, evening classes, and stolen evenings with Stas, curled up watching rom-coms dubbed in Ukrainian.

That routine ended abruptly on August 22. Finishing a grueling double shift at Zepeddies, Iryna clocked out around 9 p.m., still in her black apron dusted with flour, and boarded the Lynx Blue Line at the 7th Street Station. The train, en route to her uncle’s neighborhood in NoDa, was moderately crowded with late-night commuters – office workers scrolling phones, students dozing in seats. Surveillance footage, released last week by authorities, captures the mundane normalcy: Iryna sliding into a window seat, earbuds in, thumbing through her phone with a soft smile. Perhaps she was scrolling photos of Stas, or mapping out their weekend plans.

Seated behind her was Decarlos Brown Jr., a 34-year-old drifter with a rap sheet longer than the rail line itself. Homeless and battling untreated mental illness, Brown had cycled through Charlotte’s justice system 13 times – larceny, assault, armed robbery – often released on technicalities or low bail. That night, he fixated on Iryna, later claiming in a jailhouse rant that “materials” implanted in his brain by shadowy government forces compelled him to act. “They lashed out on her,” he told his sister Tracey over a recorded line, his voice a mix of defiance and delusion. “I don’t even know the lady. Check the implants – that’s the real killer.”

The attack unfolded in seconds. At the Woodlawn stop, Brown lunged, yanking a pocket knife from his hoodie and plunging it into Iryna’s back, neck, and chest – seven savage strikes in under 15 seconds. The footage is harrowing: Iryna’s eyes widen in terror as she twists away, hands flailing to shield her face, blood blooming across her white blouse. She collapses into the aisle, gasping, as passengers scream and surge forward. A quick-thinking nurse, off-duty ER worker Jamal Hayes, drops to his knees, pressing his shirttail against the deepest wound while another rider flags the conductor to halt the train. “Stay with us, honey,” Hayes is heard pleading on the audio feed. “Help’s coming.” But the damage was catastrophic; Iryna was pronounced dead at Atrium Health Carolinas Medical Center just 20 minutes later, her phone clutched in her bloodied hand.

In the frantic aftermath, as paramedics combed her belongings, officers recovered the device – a cracked iPhone 12, its screen still aglow with the unsent draft. Typed at 8:57 p.m., just three minutes before the stabbing, the message was addressed to Stas, timestamped amid a thread of earlier banter about dinner plans. “Babe, shift’s wrapping up early. Pizza for two tonight?” Stas had replied with a heart emoji and “Can’t wait! Love you.” Iryna’s response never sent – those six words, a bridge to a future of marriage, perhaps children, a little farmstead on the outskirts of town.

The revelation hit Stas like a second blade. Speaking exclusively to reporters outside the pizzeria on Friday, the young engineer wiped tears from his eyes, his voice barely above a whisper. “She was my everything – the girl who made me believe in second chances. That message… it’s like she knew, somehow. Like she was saying goodbye without saying it.” Stas, who identified her body in the morgue and now wears her silver locket necklace as a talisman, has channeled his sorrow into advocacy. He’s launched a GoFundMe for Ukrainian refugee safety nets, raising over $150,000 in days, and plans a memorial garden at the pizzeria site, planted with sunflowers – Iryna’s favorite, symbols of her homeland’s unyielding spirit.

Her family, too, is undone. From Kyiv, her father Stanislav issued a statement through the Ukrainian Embassy: “Our Iryna escaped bombs only to meet a monster on a train. Those words she wrote – they were for Stas, but they heal us all, reminding us of her light.” Mother Anna, still in Charlotte with the siblings, has barely left her bed, clutching Iryna’s journal filled with sketches of dogs and doodles of hearts labeled “Stas + Iryna Forever.” Uncle Mykola, who taught her to parallel park last month, seethes with quiet rage. “She was learning to drive so she could visit us freely, build that life. Now? We drive to her grave instead.”

The case against Brown has escalated swiftly. Charged with first-degree murder and a federal count of causing death on mass transit – carrying a potential death penalty – he’s been denied bail, his delusions dissected by court-appointed psychiatrists. In a bombshell jail call leaked last week, Brown rambled about “mind-reading tech” targeting him through Iryna, whom he swore was “scanning my thoughts” from her seat. Prosecutors, led by District Attorney Sean Locklear, paint a portrait of systemic failure: Brown’s untreated schizophrenia, ignored despite multiple ER visits, and a revolving-door judiciary that prioritized leniency over lockdown. “This wasn’t fate,” Locklear thundered at the briefing. “It was foreseeable folly. Iryna’s message demands we do better – for her, for every dreamer riding that rail.”

The stabbing has ignited a firestorm beyond Charlotte’s borders. National headlines decry it as emblematic of urban decay, with conservative pundits lambasting “soft-on-crime” policies and immigrant advocates highlighting the vulnerability of refugees – over 100,000 Ukrainians resettled in the U.S. since 2022, many navigating unfamiliar cities alone. Vigils dot rail stations from Raleigh to Atlanta, sunflowers wilting in makeshift memorials. At Zepeddies, a “Iryna’s Shift” fund supports staff counseling, while community college classmates have petitioned for a scholarship in her name, aimed at ESL students pursuing healthcare dreams.

As autumn leaves turn in the Carolinas, Iryna Zarutska’s unsent words linger like an echo – a testament to love’s quiet power amid chaos. “I can’t wait to build our future together.” In death, as in life, she reminds us: futures are fragile, but the blueprints we leave behind? They endure, urging us to build better, safer worlds for those who dare to dream them. For Stas, her family, and a grieving nation, those six words are both wound and salve – a heartache that heals only through action.