Near the corner of Western and Montrose avenues, a large mural has appeared on the side of a brick building that's home to a taqueria.
The painting is of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was fatally stabbed Aug. 22 while riding a train home from work in Charlotte, North Carolina. It depicts her in a blue shirt, from her shoulders up, along with her name and “2002-2025” written in white. No artist signed the mural.
"It's good to keep this memory of this innocent girl," said Halyna Parasiuk, an archivist at the Ukrainian National Museum of Chicago.
Video of the attack went viral on social media, and politicians from both sides of the political aisle condemned the killing. Republicans, including President Donald Trump and his supporters, blamed Democrats for Zarutska’s death because the man charged in the stabbing had been in and out of jail several times over the last decade.
Parasiuk has seen the video. She said it put her "in shock" and that she struggles to understand how it happened and how no witnesses rushed to help Zarutska. Parasiuk called the situation "really sad."
“It’s not a problem about some party, Democrats or Republicans, I believe," she said. "But leaders must be thinking about what’s going on around people because I believe human life is [the] most important [thing] politicians must care about."
The man charged in the killing, Decarlos Brown Jr., 34, had served nearly six years in prison for robbery and been arrested 14 times in North Carolina dating back more than a decade.
Brown’s mother said her son has a history of mental health issues and that he has he is controlled by an “object” in his head, the Charlotte Observer reported.
Trump and MAGA Republicans have used the case to call for more forcible punishments against people convicted of violent crimes even if they're suffering from mental illness. Vice President JD Vance said Democrats’ “soft-on-crime” policies were responsible for Zarutska’s death.
“She came from a war-torn country, sought shelter in the United States, and, because of soft-on-crime policies, she was murdered here and not in the war-torn country she came from. Isn’t that a disgrace?” Vance told a crowd in September in North Carolina.
The painting in Chicago is the only mural seen in its vicinity in North Center. It might be the first mural of Zarutska that has appeared in Chicago, following others that have gone up in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and Washington, D.C.
Elon Musk, who previously served in the current Trump administration, has pledged at least $1 million toward the effort to paint murals of Zarutska. Musk could not be reached for comment.
Eoghan McCabe, CEO of an artificial intelligence service called Intercom, has also helped push the effort, contributing at least $500,000.
McCabe, who didn’t respond to an interview request, regularly posts photos of murals of Zarutska on the social media platform X. His post of the Chicago mural says it was painted by an artist known as Sav45. The artist didn’t respond to an interview request.
The mural is painted on the building at 2415 W. Montrose Ave. The building owner, Glascott Realty, did not respond to messages.
A manager at Taqueria 5 De Mayo, which occupies the building, said the mural was finished in the past couple of weeks and that the restaurant owners hadn’t known about it being painted.
A representative o Ald. Matt Martin’s office (47th) said he wasn’t involved in the process to approve the mural in his ward.
‘No one’s in charge of the mental health system’
Zarutzka’s death and Brown’s arrest have spurred conversations about mental health issues in the criminal justice system.
At the time of the attack, Brown had been out on bail on a misdemeanor charge after he had repeatedly called 911 from a hospital to report that a man-made substance was controlling him, the Charlotte Observer reported. A North Carolina judge ordered a mental evaluation for Brown a month before Zarutzka died. Brown's lawyer said he has a history of mental health issues and asked for an evaluation to determine if he’s fit to stand trial.
The disconnect of mental health treatment in the criminal justice system is prevalent across the country, said Mark Heyrman, a former University of Chicago law professor who is on a state task force examining issues of mental health in the criminal justice system.
“We don’t have a coordinated system in a variety of ways,” Heyrman said. “This is true of all 50 states — this isn’t a criticism of Illinois — no one’s in charge of the mental health system in Illinois.”
Heyrman said more funding for mental health services would be needed to start creating a coordinated system and help lower recidivism rates. The Trump administration has been cutting mental health funding, as well as funding for Medicaid, the principal funder for mental health services.
“If you cut that back, you are just going to have more people who are poor, who are not getting mental health services and therefore will deteriorate and end up either in hospitals, which is expensive, or sometimes in the criminal justice system,” Heyrman said. “If you want to prevent that, you have to spend more money on mental health services. You have to make sure everyone is covered.”
