Tangle - The Charlotte stabbing.
Episode Date: September 10, 2025On Friday, August 22, 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska was stabbed to death on a light-rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina. Police arrested 34-year-old ex-convict Decarlos Br...own Jr. as a suspect in Zarutska’s death and charged him with murder. On Tuesday, the Justice Department also charged Brown with a federal crime. Warning: Today’s topic involves descriptions of graphic violence.Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast here, our “Under the Radar” story here and today’s “Have a nice day” story here.Take the survey: What do you think the appropriate response to Brown should be, or should have been? Let us know.Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Swiped is a new movie inspired by the provocative real-life story of the visionary founder of online dating platform Bumble.
Played by Lily James, Swiped introduces recent college grad Whitney Wolfe
as she uses extraordinary grit and ingenuity to break into the male-dominated tech industry,
paving her way to becoming the youngest female self-made billionaire.
An official selection of the Toronto International Film Festival,
the Hulu original film Swiped starts streaming September 19th,
Only on Disney Plus.
Thank you for your patience.
Your call is important.
Can't take being on hold anymore?
FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes.
Mobile plans start at $15 a month.
Certain conditions apply.
Details at Fizz.ca.
Not a billionaire.
Not a problem.
You can still do something legendary by leaving a gift to charity in your will.
Even 1% in your will can change the game for a call you care about
without taking away what you or your family need.
It's a powerful way to make your mark.
Anyone can leave a legacy.
Willpower shows you how.
Learn more at willpower.ca.
Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take.
I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the stabbing incident in Charlotte, North Carolina, a video of which has caused a national outcry and started a debate about crime and public spaces and mental health here in the United States.
We're going to break down exactly what happened, share some views from the left and the right, and then I've got my take today.
I'm going to send over to Will, who's going to break down today's main topic, and I'll be back from my take.
Thanks, Isaac. Here are today's quick hits.
Number one, Poland said that it shot down multiple Russian drones that entered its territory overnight.
Belarus claimed that the drones had gone off course after being jammed, but some European
leaders alleged the incursion was deliberate.
Number two, the Supreme Court agreed to hear two cases on the legality of the Trump
administration's tariffs, with oral arguments planned for the first week of November.
Separately, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary administrative stay, allowing the Trump
administration to pause disbursement of roughly $4 billion in foreign aid while the move is
challenged in court. Number three, Hamas said that its primary leaders survived Israel's airstrike
on its senior political leadership in Qatar, but five of its members were killed. President Trump said
Israel informed the United States of the attack ahead of time, but criticized the country for attacking
inside Qatar. Number four, a federal judge ruled that federal reserve governor Lisa Cook can
remain in her role while her legal challenge to President Trump's attempt to fire her plays out.
The Trump administration is expected to appeal the decision.
And finally, number five, Nepal's prime minister resigned amid widespread protests
catalyzed by a ban on social media platforms.
At least 19 protesters have been killed in clashes with the police.
Before we start on today's main topic, a quick note that today's topic involves descriptions
of graphic violence.
It was two weeks ago today that this woman,
Arina Zarutka, a Ukrainian refugee,
was killed while riding the light rail in South Charlotte.
Since that time, there have been several questions about what happened,
why it happened, and could it have been prevented?
Today, Katz released surveillance video of the events leading up to
and after her murder.
And we want to warn you, some of these images could be considered disturbing to our viewers.
On Friday, August 22nd, 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee
Arena Zarutska was stabbed to death on a light rail in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Police arrested 34-year-old ex-convict De Carlos Brown Jr. as a suspect in Zarutzka's death
and charged him with murder. On Tuesday, the Justice Department also charged Brown with a federal crime.
The incident has sparked a national debate about public safety and criminal justice reform,
as well as criticism from conservative commentators about media coverage of the attack.
Officials said that Brown and Zarutka appeared to have no.
interaction prior to the stabbing, according to a public affidavit, and police have not offered a motive
for the attack. Zerutska had immigrated to the United States from Ukraine in 2022 and was returning
from work at a local pizzeria when she was killed. On September 5th, the Charlotte Area Transit System
released surveillance video of the attack. The video appears to show Zerutska entering the train car
and sitting in front of Brown, who appeared agitated before Brown unfolds a knife and stabs
Zerutska. Brown can then be seen walking down the train car before removing his sweatshirt and exiting
the train, and he was arrested at the train platform shortly after that. Brown had an extensive
criminal record prior to the stabbing. In 2014, he was convicted of felony breaking and entering
and sentenced to 30 days in jail and 24 months supervised probation. Later that year, he was convicted
of a robbery with a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm by a felon. Brown served five
years in prison before he was released and placed on one year of parole in 2020.
In January 2025, Charlotte Police arrested Brown for a third time for allegedly misusing 911.
Brown told officers he had been given a, quote, man-made substance that controlled his behavior
and dialed 911 in front of officers when he was dissatisfied with their response.
A magistrate released Brown on a promissory note to appear before the court, and on July 28th,
Judge Roy Wiggins directed him to get a forensic evaluation.
Members of the Trump administration blamed the criminal justice policies in Charlotte for Zerutska's death.
Quote, the public transportation system in a major American city was more dangerous than the war zone
Zerutska left behind, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt said on Monday.
These are blue cities, and they have all supported these disastrous policies which allow repeated
career criminals back onto the streets to further commit acts of violence.
If mayors can't keep their trains and buses safe, they don't deserve the taxpayers' money.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a statement.
North Carolina Democrats also expressed dismay over the stabbing,
but said the state's policies were not to blame for the attack.
Instead, a spokesperson for former governor and current Senate candidate Roy Cooper
criticized, quote, federal policies that cut local and state law enforcement funding.
Charlotte Mayor V. Liles, who won her primary election on Tuesday,
faced criticism for her initial statement on the attack,
which some said focused more on the assailant than the,
victim. Liles later said that she supports legislation to keep repeat offenders like Brown
off the streets. Today we'll get into what the left and right are saying about this attack
and the fallout from it. Then Isaac will give his take.
Thank you for your patience.
Your call is important.
Can't take being on hold anymore.
FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes.
Mobile plans start at $15 a month.
Certain conditions apply, details at fizz.ca.
Say hello savings and goodbye worries with Freedom Mobile.
Get 60 gigs to use in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico for just $39 bucks a month.
Plus get a one-time use of five gigs of roam beyond data.
Conditions apply, details at freedommobile.com.
lately every day feels like one non-stop breaking news story and every headline seems increasingly dire with so much noise it can be hard to figure out what deserves our time and attention that's where pod save america comes in every tuesday and friday john love it tommy vetter john favro and dan fifer break down the latest political developments with sharp analysis unfiltered insights and just enough humor to keep us all from spiraling into a twitter fight most of the time
Join in as they have candid conversations you won't hear anywhere else with guests across the non-brain-worn political spectrum.
You can listen to Pod Save America wherever you get your podcast, watch on YouTube, or subscribe on Apple Podcasts for ad-free episodes.
Before we get into what commentators on the left and right are saying, we want to note a point of agreement.
Writers and lawmakers on both sides express horror at the attack and sympathy.
for the victim. Now on to what the left is saying. The left is alarmed by Zarutzka's killing,
but disputes that democratic policies are to blame. Some reject the notion that the attack was motivated
by racial animus. Others call on lawmakers to invest more in mental health services. In the Charlotte
Observer, Page Maston wrote, Trump is making the Charlotte light rail killing a partisan issue. It's not that
simple. Of course, there is a legitimate discussion to be had about public safety in Charlotte and
legitimate questions about the failures that might have allowed this incident to occur.
Safety is an issue that has dogged the city for some time, and it's one that leaders can't afford to
ignore. Mayor V. Lyle's announced in a statement Monday that the city is taking action to increase
transit safety, including increasing fair enforcement and police patrols, Maston said. That's a start,
but it's unfortunate that it took such intense politicization of this tragedy to get Liles and
cats to finally act on one facet of it. But this isn't a Democrat.
versus Republican issue, and it's wrong to treat it as one. While the focus is often on crime in
blue cities and blue states, it's an issue in red cities and red states as well. In fact, data shows
that homicide rates tend to be highest in blue cities located in red states, suggesting that neither
party is solely to blame. In fact, red states tend to have higher homicide rates than blue states
in part due to higher rates of gun homicides, Masson wrote. That's something Trump and Republicans
don't tend to acknowledge. Using a tragedy like this to
advance a particular political narrative or promote one candidate over another is distasteful and
divisive. On Newsnight with Abby Phillip on CNN, Van Jones argued the right is race mongering
in response to the murder. Note this is a transcription of Jones's comments on the television
show. What happened to that young woman was horrible and it's everybody's nightmare. You're in any
public space or a subway and something bad happens to you or somebody you care about. So it does
strike accord, Jones said. We don't know why that man did what he did. And for Charlie Kirk and other
conservatives to say we know he did it because she's white, when there's no evidence of that is just
pure race-mongering, hate-mongering. It's wrong. Kirk says that if something like that had happened
the other way, there would be sweeping changes imposed on society. Well, where is the George Floyd
Policing Act? It didn't pass. Even when you had a white police officer murder a black man live on
television, the whole world saw there was no sweeping changes. In fact, not
one law was passed at the federal level, Jones said. What happened was horrible, but it becomes an
opportunity for people to jump on bandwagons, and then for somebody like Charlie Kirk, he should be ashamed
of himself. No one mentioned the word race, white, black, or anything, except him. What people
mentioned is the horror of what happened to this young woman. In her substack, Andrea Burkart
said, criminalizing mental illness is getting us killed. Retribution sells, rehabilitation doesn't. Like every
other state in the nation, North Carolina has a severe shortage of psychiatric beds. Mental health
treatment and crisis intervention are not funding priorities for legislatures, Burkart wrote.
I've seen a lot of criticism of woke and leftist policies as contributing to Ms. Zarutzka's horrendous
demise, but Republicans control North Carolina's legislature and have not taken the opportunity
to provide the mental health system and the resources it needs to fulfill its function.
President Trump recently supported reopening insane asylums in an interview. The
thing is, there's no legal impediment to rebuilding a robust mental health system.
What stands in the way of more and better psychiatric resources is nothing more than political
will. But legislators are far more skilled at deflecting their own responsibility for public
safety failures onto others than doing the hard work of actually addressing public safety failures,
Burckhart said. And around we go, promoting more of the same retributive policies that have led us
to imprison more people than China, despite having less than a quarter of the population and an
ostensibly freer society. In the meantime, Mr. Brown will almost certainly be pursuing the most
foreseeable insanity defense ever. Now here's what the right is saying. The right sees the stabbing
as symptomatic of lenient policies toward crime from democratic leaders. Some call for
stricter laws to keep repeat offenders off the streets. Others say the left's internal politics
prevent it from reckoning with this issue. In the Charlotte Observer, Andrew Dunn argued the attack
should jolt Charlotte awake. No murder is acceptable, but some shock the conscience more than others.
Random killings of young people in places where they should have had every expectation of safety
leave us shaken in a way others do not, Dunn wrote. Three days after the stabbing, the Charlotte Police
Department published a graphic bragging about the real picture of crime in our city,
claiming that homicides and armed robberies were down 30% from last year.
That may be true, or it may not be, but Arena Zuritska's murder makes a mockery of the comfort
we try to take in statistics. Too often, Charlotte's leaders have talked about crime as if it's a
perception problem. Uptown business groups launch PR campaigns, news slogans, and billboard ads to assure
people it's safe. They talk about vibrancy and image.
about whether visitors feel comfortable.
But this is not a marketing issue.
It's a human one, Dunn said.
That culture of permissiveness has to end.
Riders should know every person on that train has paid to be there.
CMPD and CATS must post a visible security presence on platforms and trains,
and judges must stop releasing violent offenders back into the community on little more than a promise.
In Fox News, Representative Mark Harris, a Republican from North Carolina,
said Arena Zarutzka fled Ukraine for safety,
but Democrats' soft-on-crime policies failed her.
This was not a random act.
It was a preventable tragedy, a failure of our system, to protect the vulnerable.
America failed Zarutka, and we must ensure it does not fail others like her, Harris wrote.
This incident reflects a broader crisis unfolding across our nation,
where soft-on-crime policies allow dangerous criminals to evade accountability.
Charlotte Mayor V. Liles has claimed, quote,
we will never arrest our way out of issues such as homelessness and mental health,
end quote. I disagree. Though addressing root causes is important,
we cannot ignore the immediate need to protect our communities by ensuring repeat offenders
face consequences. The left's approach of prioritizing leniency for offenders over justice
for victims has left too many, like arena, vulnerable. In Democrat-led cities from Charlotte
to Chicago, we see a troubling pattern of downplaying lawlessness while overlooking the pain,
of those who suffer, Harris said.
To address this crisis, we need a balanced approach,
immediate, robust law enforcement to remove dangerous offenders from our streets
and long-term investments to tackle the root causes of crime.
It also means reforming bail systems to ensure violent repeat offenders
are not easily released to harm innocent people like Zerutska.
In the free press, Kat Rosenfield wrote about the taboo that killed Arena Zerutska.
Until the security footage from that night was released,
the story flew oddly under the race.
radar. It did so for the same reasons that it's now become a flashpoint in online discourse about
crime, disorder, and public safety in American cities today, Rosenfield said. For conservatives,
this incident seems like a slam-dunked indictment of the progressive attitudes toward policing
and criminal justice that emerged in the wake of the 2020 police killing of George Floyd.
But while this vicious crime plausibly represents the policy chickens of 2020 coming home to roost,
that only halfway explains why the story has so captured the public imagination.
The greater issue is a cultural one,
a growing frustration with what often feels like
limitless tolerance for public disorder and antisocial behavior.
And with it, a sense that one must not only avoid discussing these things
to remain a liberal and good standing,
but actively pretend they don't exist,
Rosenfeld wrote.
In shying away from what is politically inconvenient,
ugly, or otherwise uncomfortable,
we not only see the conversation to racist idiots,
but relinquish with it all hopes of a better future.
The problem is not politics,
per se, but an inability to course correct when what seemed like progress turned out to be a
misstep.
All right, that is it for what the left and right are saying.
I'll send it back over to Isaac for his take.
All right, that is it for the left and the writer saying, which brings us to my take.
If you watch the video of Arina Zarutzka's killing, which
I did, and I don't recommend. It is truly stomach churning. The incident shows everyone's worst
nightmare about public spaces, a random, unprovoked attack, violent and sudden, while onlookers do
quite literally nothing to help or age you as you die in front of them. The moment I saw it, I knew
the story would gain national attention. Not because the assailant to Carlos Brown Jr. is black and
Zerutska is white. Not even because Zerutska was a Ukrainian refugee, though of course,
course, the symbolism of her surviving and fleeing a war only to be murdered on American
public transport is a little too on the nose. I knew it would become a national news event
because the lead-up is just so familiar and the brutality is so plain. One minute, Zerutska is
casually scrolling on her phone on a train car, the same way we all do, surrounded by people
all in their own little world zoning out as they roll along. The next minute, the seemingly
calm, hooded man behind her completely snaps, stabbing her several times in the neck
before walking away as if he were just getting up for his stop.
All the while, she bleeds out with onlookers frozen in shock or apathy.
What do you say?
I grasp at words like mortifying or horrific, but they honestly don't come close.
Zerutska's death did draw national attention, mostly focused on the societal tendency
to ignore people acting erratically in public, or how Brown was arrested and released more
than a dozen times, where how the liberal, lefty, corporate, sleazy mainstream media didn't cover it
the same way they covered Daniel Penny, a white man who killed a black man on public transportation,
and how this is evidence of the way they're brainwashing the public. These narratives all strike me as both
superficial and unhelpful. Unlike some writers, I did not think Zerutska sat in a seat we should all
avoid. I've lived in major American cities my entire adult life, and I have a pretty good radar
for the kinds of people to steer clear of. The scariest part of this incident, to me,
me, is that Brown didn't look dangerous. He looked mostly like the kind of sleepy, exhausted patron
of public transportation you see all the time. That he's black or has dreads or is wearing a red
hoodie shouldn't set off alarm bells. If any one of those qualities did, then just existing in public
would be an intolerable adventure. Brown didn't appear agitated until long after Zerutska had sat down,
and by then, it was too late. To me, that's what makes it so difficult to process and so unsettling
to the core. I also don't give much credence to the idea that the national outlets tried to bury this
story. Here at Tangle, what to give attention to and what to show our readers is usually one of
the toughest questions we ask every day. While the release of the surveillance footage sparked a
robust debate, the actual stabbing occurred on August 22nd. Before this weekend, even local coverage
of the murder was sparse. It's not as if all these media critics were on top of the murder the
day after it happened. The larger reaction was caused by how graphic the video is.
that an outlet like the New York Times would not dedicate coverage to murder in Charlotte two weeks after it happened is not at all surprising to me.
Why did the New York Times cover Daniel Penny killing Jordan Neely so much but ignore this is also not a hard question to answer.
It's the New York Times and Penny killed someone on the New York subway.
It's their city, their story.
Multiple videos of Neely's death were also made public immediately, hours after the incident,
that Penny claimed to be a good Samaritan trying to protect a train full of people from an erratic passenger was also novel.
That's what made the story such a sensational source for rich dialogue and debate.
That's why it was bigger.
To be frank, I think it's harder to justify dedicating limited space to a single violent crime in Charlotte than it is to just ignore it,
though the story the Times eventually produce, which framed this as an animating issue for the right,
certainly rubbed me the wrong way.
where I believe the public should focus the conversation
is how to navigate the treatment-first punishment question going forward.
I don't think the solution is as simple as many people seem to think,
which is lock him up.
I've articulated my most extreme political view in this newsletter and podcast,
which is, I don't think humans belong in cages, full stop.
Anyone trying to convince you they do
or that prisons can consistently fix people
or that they genuinely improve public safety
is describing prisons as they wish them to be, but not as they are.
Better arguments might be that removing dangerous people from society keeps us safe
or that victims deserve justice even when it is brutal or draconian as putting people in cages is.
Yet when these arguments only view the options for isolating people as narrowly tailored to prison,
they don't grapple with the reality that delivering justice for present-day victims might be creating more victims in the future.
But I also readily admit that this is in a lot of ways squishy.
It's an emotional appeal without a tangible solution.
I don't yet have a fleshed out alternative to prisons.
People deserve safety.
And as someone proves they can't operate in civilized society,
if they infringe on the safety and freedom of others,
then it is just and fair to try to find a way to temporarily remove them.
I want those people to be isolated.
So my friends, family, and fellow Americans can live safely.
Brown was one such person.
He had been arrested 14 times in North Carolina
for everything from assault to firearms possession
to felony robbery.
Should we blame a lack of cash bail in Charlotte?
I'll put it this way.
Would you have felt better about the murder
had one of Brown's friends or family paid the government
$1,500 to get him released before he killed Zerutska?
Is our society better off if someone with a few thousand dollars
handy can commit crimes and walk free
while someone without that money can't?
I honestly don't find that argument particularly compelling, and it isn't at all clear to me that this crime doesn't happen if Brown had posted bail.
Everything we learned about Brown after he was identified as a suspect can help inform this conversation.
He served five years in prison for armed robbery, yet this did not dissuade him from future crime.
His own mother told a local TV station that he was schizophrenic.
He was forcefully admitted for two weeks and diagnosed.
When he became so aggressive, she couldn't handle him, she kicked him out of her house.
house. He was recently arrested for abusing the 911 system. He had told police that he was being
poisoned and that how he ate, walked, and talked was being controlled, a classic manifestation of
schizophrenia. A judge heard these details and then released him with a promise to appear before a court
at a later date. That was the last contact he had with the justice system before he killed
Zerutska. How do we want to handle people like this? For a convicted criminal diagnosed by a professional
team with a treatable but challenging mental illness, do we think putting him in a prison cell
is the best response or a psych ward or something at the intersection of the two? Do we think these people
should get a say in their own fate or have they forfeited that right by making it clear they can't
control their behavior? Do we want the public to fund services to isolate and treat these people
in the name of public safety and crime reduction and basic human instinct to help? Or do we want
the burden to be on the families and the private sector. These are the kinds of meaningful,
actionable questions at the heart of this story. I don't have all the answers, but I know a few
things about how I would have considered Brown's case before the murder, which will rightfully
land him in jail for life and possibly garner the death penalty. One, I'd rather that Brown be
isolated from society than walking free. Two, I'd rather he be in a place where he is getting
treatment so that he can one day have a chance to be reintegrated into society rather than getting
punishment, which again did not seem to help him reintegrate.
Three, I'd gladly give over a larger chunk of my tax dollars to funding such treatment centers
if I knew it would meaningfully make our streets safer and citizens healthier and give Brown
at least a fleeting chance at a redemption story. Most of the country shares the horror of this
murder and most of us seem to agree we can't keep living like this with so many unwell and
potentially dangerous people left to their own devices. If our options or prisoner help,
I think we can and should recognize that prison often fails people like Brown. It did not
rehabilitate or deter him, and that outcome is the norm. Help, the centers and treatments we have
are the ones we are yet to build, is hard and complicated and expensive. But so are most good things.
For all the talk of lefty criminal justice policies being conceptual failures, there's very
little chatter about how these policies have not been followed through on in North Carolina.
The state has a shortage of psychiatric beds and lacks funding for rehabilitation programs.
If we want to break this cycle and change the trajectory of these public spaces and this troubled
population, I think we ought to not only imagine something better than a cage, but actually
follow through on creating a better system. Not just for us, but for future victims and future
perpetrators, too. All right, that is it for my take. I'm going to pass it over to
Audrey today, who has a staff dissent.
Thanks, Isaac.
While I agree with Isaac's critique of our prison system,
I disagree that the primary goal of the justice system
is necessarily rehabilitation and reintegration,
especially in cases of violence or severe mental illness.
Violent offenders recidivate at a higher rate,
sooner, and for more serious crimes than nonviolent offenders.
Furthermore, roughly 1% of the population is accountable.
for 63% of violent crime convictions.
I believe we ought to sentence recidivism
more seriously than first offenses.
And while I personally believe
that Brown's mental illness
means he is not fully culpable
for the crime he committed,
I think our present ability
to treat violent mental illness
as patchy at best.
Primarily, I'm concerned
that prioritizing reintegration
in these cases,
given the limitations of the current science,
could lead to more danger
for both the ill individual and others.
Okay, now I'll set it over
to Will for the rest of today's pod.
We'll be right back after this quick break.
Thank you for your patience.
Your call is important.
Can't take being on hold anymore?
FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes.
Mobile plans start at $15 a month.
Certain conditions apply.
Details at FIS.ca.
The twisted tale of a
Amanda Knox is an eight-episode Hulu original limited series that blends gripping pacing with emotional complexity,
offering a dramatized look as it revisits the wrongful conviction of Amanda Knox for the tragic murder of Meredith Kircher and the relentless media storm that followed.
The twisted tale of Amanda Knox is now streaming only on Disney Plus.
All right, let's take things home with today's Under the Radar Story.
In September, the Department of Health and Human Services is expected to release a report
identifying potential causes of autism at the behest of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The review will reportedly highlight the use of the pain reliever Tylenol during pregnancy
as one cause, as well as low levels of folate, a vitamin that assists in the production of DNA and RNA.
Some studies have suggested that Tylenol poses a risk to fetal development,
but major medical associations say it's safe to use in pregnancy with a doctor's consultation.
This report is not finalized,
and whether Kennedy and HHS plan to allege a link between vaccines and autism
in the final version is still unknown.
The Wall Street Journal has this story,
and you can find the link to it in today's show notes.
Now on to numbers, about...
today's main topic. The approximate number of years that Arena Zerudska had lived in the United
States after immigrating in August 22 to escape the war in Ukraine was three years. The number of times
that DeC Carlos Brown Jr. was arrested prior to being charged with murdering Zerutska was 14 times.
The approximate amount of federal transport funding the city of Charlotte, North Carolina,
received is about $50 million. And the percentage of Charlotte's total transit operating budget
covered by federal funds is about 12%.
The approximate violent crime rate in Charlotte is 733 per 100,000.
The approximate murder and non-negligent homicide rate in Charlotte is approximately 11 per 100,000.
And finally, the approximate violent crime rate in the United States in 2024 was 359 per 100,000.
Finally, here is today's Have a Nice Day story.
Guinness World Records recently celebrated 70 years since its first book of amazing and unusual achievements, marking the anniversary by highlighting some of the uplifting stories of record holders.
One such person is Zela Avant-Garde, who holds the record for the most bound struggles in one minute with four basketballs at 255.
Avant-Garde, now 18, has gone on to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee, author a best-selling book, and be named Sports Illustrated Kids Sports Kid of the Year.
In addition to sharing these stories, Guinness World Records identified 70 potential records that
have yet to be broken, including the fastest 400-meter sack race, farthest distance to bounce
a coin into a cup, and the most headbands worn at once.
Nice news has this story, and again, the link to it is in today's show notes.
All right, that is it for today's edition.
Thank you, as always, for being with us.
We'll be back tomorrow.
Until then, have a great day.
Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wohl.
Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas.
Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback
and associate editors Hunter Asperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Canuth, and Kendall White.
Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.
To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at reetangle.com.
Thank you for your patience.
Your call is important.
Can't take being on hold anymore?
FIS is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes.
Mobile plans start at $15 a month.
Certain conditions apply.
Details at FIS.ca.
Say hello savings and goodbye worries with Freedom Mobile.
Get 60 gigs to use in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico for just $39 bucks a month.
Plus get a one-time use of five gigs of Rome Beyond data.
Conditions apply, details at freedommobile.ca.
Not a billionaire, not a problem.
You can still do something legendary by leaving a gift to charity in your will.
Even 1% in your will can change the game for a cause you care about
without taking away what you or your family need.
It's a powerful way to make your mark.
Anyone can leave a legacy
Willpower shows you how
Learn more at willpower.ca.