Roy Cooper let thousands of hardened criminals back onto the streets of North Carolina. Rapists. Pedophiles. Murderers. And when one of those monsters slaughtered a young Ukrainian refugee on a Charlotte light rail car, the former governor still had no explanation.
Michael Whatley is not letting him off the hook.
Appearing on Breitbart News Daily, the Republican Senate candidate and former RNC chairman put it plainly. “Roy Cooper has blood on his hands.” He released “4,200 hardened criminals,” Whatley said. “We’re talking the worst of the worst. We’re talking rapists. We’re talking pedophiles. We’re talking murderers out of North Carolina jails because he didn’t want them to get COVID.”
One of them was Decarlos Brown Jr. A year ago this month, a beautiful young Ukrainian refugee named Iryna Zarutska finished her shift at a pizzeria, boarded a Charlotte light rail car late at night, and was brutally murdered without provocation.
Whatley described the horror without flinching. “That monster should not have been on the streets. That monster should not have been on that light rail car, and that beautiful young lady should be alive today. And her blood is on Roy Cooper’s hands.”
Cooper has never explained the decision. Never apologized to the families. Whatley noted there are two dozen other families who lost someone to the criminals Cooper put back on the street. Ninety-nine of those released were later re-arrested on child pornography, sexual assault, or rape charges. And 2,200 of the criminals he released have been re-arrested since walking free.
The numbers only get uglier the deeper you dig. A searchable database compiled at CooperReleasedHim.com tracks more than 4,200 prisoners granted early release under the 2021 settlement Cooper’s administration struck with left-wing groups including the NAACP and ACLU.
At least 2,412 of them have been convicted of new crimes or post-release violations. That is more than half. Among them were dozens of murderers and nearly a hundred sex offenders. The North State Journal reported the grim details earlier this year.
The New York Post found that nearly half the inmates released under the COVID-era deal were charged with new crimes, including at least 18 for murder. These were not low-level nonviolent offenders quietly finishing short sentences. The list included men serving life for rape and murder. Cooper’s people claimed violent offenders would be excluded. They were not.
Cooper’s defenders insist the settlement was forced by a court after activists sued over prison conditions. They claim he fought the broader demands and limited the damage. Whatley is having none of it. Other governors faced the same pressure. Cooper was the one who settled by turning thousands of convicts loose. He has never looked the families in the eye and owned the consequences.
Whatley has made the point central to his campaign. He has backed Iryna’s Law, the North Carolina measure that tightened pretrial release rules so repeat violent offenders stay locked up instead of walking free on cashless bail and soft policies. The same soft approach that kept dangerous men on the street after Cooper’s releases.
Scripture does not soft-pedal the duty of those who hold the sword. “For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.”
A governor who empties cells of the worst predators and then shrugs when the bodies pile up has failed that basic charge. Cooper still has no explanation. The families of the dead are still waiting for one. North Carolina voters get to decide in November whether that is good enough.
