(CNN) — The suspect in the grisly slaying of a young woman on a Charlotte, North Carolina, light rail train now faces a federal charge in a case that has turned into a political lightning rod in the country where she had come to seek safety.

Iryna Zarutska fled Ukraine in 2022 with her mother, sister, and brother to escape the war with Russia “and she quickly embraced her new life in the United States,” her obituary states.

But on the night of August 22, moments after she texted her boyfriend to say she would be home soon, a man sitting behind her on the train stabbed her three times in the throat in an unprovoked attack.

The suspect, 34-year-old Decarlos Brown, had a long rap sheet and now faces a state charge of first-degree murder and a federal charge of committing an act causin

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