Stokes, a magistrate judge in North Carolina, presided over a case involving Decarlos Brown Jr. months before he was accused of murdering a Ukrainian refugee.

In April 2014, Brown pleaded guilty to two 2013 charges of felony larceny and breaking and entering. Online court records are barren of details on these cases. A judge (online court records don’t specify who) suspended his sentence of five to 15 months in prison. Instead, the judge ordered he serve two years probation.

Iryna Zarutska's killer Decarlos Brown Jr. has a history of violence in his family, with both his father and brother having been arrested for shocking crimes.

US President Donald Trump demanded the death penalty for a man charged with murdering a Ukrainian refugee on a North Carolina train - a crime the US right has turned into a political rallying point.

Decarlos Brown has a long history of being in trouble with the law; his criminal record shows three misdemeanors between 2007 and 2009.

The sicko accused of brutally stabbing Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska to death on a train in North Carolina last month has been hit with a federal criminal charge, the Justice Department and FBI

“I’m all right, Mama. I’m good,” Michelle Dewitt remembered her son saying shortly after police charged him in the Aug. 22 killing of a woman on the Charlotte light rail train. Brown told her that the police said they had the wrong man, and that they were going to let him go, said Dewitt, of Charlotte.