Like everyone else, my imagination filled in the missing gap of the original video of Iryna Zarutska’s murder with images from an action film: the killer’s knife, flashing beside his shrouded face, plunges in a frenzied swing.
EDITORIAL: HOW TRUMP CAN RESPOND TO CHARLOTTE STABBING
Next, the nearby passengers leap backward into the windows, shouting in terror but frozen by fear. The sight of the killer striding nonchalantly away down the aisle leaves eyes wide and jaws agape.
But as the world now knows, reality was far more disturbing. The girl, who had fled the war in Ukraine to the safety of a proud U.S. city, did not die instantly nor painlessly, but slowly and consciously, at first not understanding what had happened, and then not believing the truth: that an anonymous man had pierced her neck with his pocket knife for no reason, and that her life was winding to a close in bafflement and terror as she crumpled to the floor.
Worst of all was her final vision: the woman seated on the other side of the aisle pretending to look at her phone as the killer escaped, pretending not to see the blood draining from her neck. Zarutska and her family had doubtless witnessed inhuman depravity in the war zone of Ukraine. But had she ever witnessed something so inhuman as her neighbors pretending not to notice her death?
The slaying disturbs the soul for a million reasons, and its implications are vast for our nation and our politics. I confess that I did not fully understand the true depth of the spiritual desolation of our cities before this moment. I would have guessed it was possible. But witnessing such a thing forces a reckoning with the raw, unfiltered truth.
CRIME IN US CITIES AS TRUMP AIMS TO EXPAND CRACKDOWN: LATEST COVERAGE
A poem by Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy, an Anglican priest and chaplain during World War I, called “Indifference,” came to mind as I watched the surveillance footage. It depicts Jesus slumped against a wall in a big city as it “simply passed Him by” and “only let Him die.” The poem ends with Jesus crying out for Calvary, suggesting that the pain of the cross was preferable to a lonely death caused by a cold, uncaring society.
One can imagine Iryna Zarutska relating. The indifference is intolerable.
