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I have a 21 year old stepdaughter whose mother in a Ukrainian immigrant who grew up when that country was under the brutal heel of Soviet communism. My stepdaughter looks very similar to Iryna Zarutska, the Ukrainian refugee from Putin's terror who was stabbed to death while riding on the light rail system in Charlotte, NC. Both my stepdaughter and have been to Ulraine and have tremendous sympathy for the plight of those innocent people, who have suffered from Russian tyranny for over a century. Both of us are also struggling to cope with the tragedy in Charlotte.

This incident brings to my mind the novel by Dostoevsky about a senseless murder and the agony of the perpetrator to deal with his guilt. Of course, Decarlos Brown is no Rodion Raskolnikov. The latter was motivated by severe poverty while the former suffers from severe schozophrenia. Rodion ultimately confessed and was sentenced to prison, while the latter is probably not aware that he took a life and has no trepidation about any punishment for his crime.

Ironically, I actually have sympathy for Decarlos as a result of the very challenging psychotherapy I once endured. This experience informed me of the critical importance of loving, balanced care by BOTH a mother and father during childhood. .Anything ;ess results in one of the myriad forms of arrested psychological development. Schizophrenia in particular derives from parenting deficits in very early life which result in a fractured sense of self. I don't know anything about Decarlos' early childhood but I suspect it was chaotic. It is the infant Decarlos for whom I feel sympathy, for he was an innocent then as was Iryna on that train.

Some here will want to blame our liberal criminal justice system for this tragedy and others will claim that this unique incident is being hyped by the racist right wing for political purposes. Both reactions are defenses against awareness that all our mental/emotional/behavioral processes are derived and too often compelled by unconscious conflicts and enxieties extant from our earlly development.

MY personal take: It's time to focus our energies on how to best raise our children.