NEW: Trump Floats Death Penalty For ‘Animal’ Killer Of Iryna Zarutska

The mentally ill killer of a Ukrainian refugee deserves the death penalty, President Donald Trump stated on Wednesday.

Any trial for Decarlos Brown Jr., the 34-year-old man charged with the murder of Iryna Zarutska, should be “quick,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. His comments come after a media firestorm about the killing on a train in North Carolina last month.

“The ANIMAL who so violently killed the beautiful young lady from Ukraine, who came to America searching for peace and safety, should be given a ‘Quick’ (there is no doubt!) Trial, and only awarded THE DEATH PENALTY,” Trump posted. “There can be no other option!”

Zarutska was traveling alone on a late-night train when her throat was slit by Brown, who later told his sister that he had no reason for attacking the woman.

“I hurt my hand, stabbing her. I don’t even know the lady,” Brown told his sister in a recorded call from his jail cell, the Daily Mail reported.

“I never said not one word to the lady at all. That’s scary, ain’t it. Why would somebody stab somebody for no reason?”

Zarutska’s slaying has brought renewed focus on Democrats’ messaging struggles with violent crime. Trump on Monday claimed “blood is on the hands of the Democrats who refuse to put bad people in jail.”

The president has singled out Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, a candidate for U.S. Senate, after records show that Brown was released from custody at least a dozen times before Zarutska’s murder. He previously served prison time but was released in 2020.

The killing also comes at the tail end of Trump’s federal takeover of Washington, D.C. National Guard soldiers will begin withdrawing from the city on Wednesday, marking the end to a 30-day presence that was meant to deter crime in the nation’s capital.

Brown, who is black, has been charged by the U.S. Justice Department with one count of committing an act causing death on a mass transportation system.

Records obtained by Fox News showed that Brown has a history of arrests going back more than a decade, including convictions for felony larceny and felony breaking and entering in 2013, and a 2015 conviction for robbery with a dangerous weapon that sent him to prison for more than six years. He was released in 2020 but remained on parole until 2021, and subsequent charges against him included communicating threats and misuse of the 911 system earlier this year.

Trump has pointed to lenient criminal justice policies such as cashless bail as a sign that Democrats aren’t taking the problem of urban crime seriously.

“This cashless bail started a wave in our country where a killer kills somebody and is out on the street by the afternoon and, in many cases, going out and killing again, cashless bail,” Trump said on Monday.