‘This Man Was Hurting,’ Says CNN’s Van Jones About Killer Who Stabbed Ukrainian Refugee to Death

CNN political commentator Van Jones attempted to explain the brutal killing of a Ukrainian refugee in cold blood this week, remarking that the killer “was hurting” and that “hurt people hurt people.”

Reacting on CNN NewsNight to the killing of 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska – who was stabbed to death on a North Carolina light rail last month by Decarlos Brown Jr., a Black man with a lengthy criminal history – Jones said that while “what happened to that young woman was horrible and it’s everybody’s nightmare,” we “don’t know why that man did what he did.”

“And for Charlie Kirk 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,” Jones continued:

It’s not about cashless bail or no cashless bail, it’s about the fact that we don’t know how to deal with people who are hurting in the way this man was hurting. Hurt people hurt people. What happened was horrible, but it becomes an opportunity for people to jump on bandwagons, and then for someone 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.

Republican strategist Brad Todd replied, “Van, I’ma agree with you. I don’t care who was white and who was Black, and I don’t know how Charlie Kirk got into it. I agree with you on that.”

After killing Zarutska in cold blood, Brown appeared to mutter, “I got that white girl,” as he fled the scene of the crime.

Brown, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, already had a lengthy criminal record before the killing, including for violent crimes.

Watch above via CNN.