Earlier this month, a new mural of Iryna Zarutska, the 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was killed in Charlotte, N.C., last summer, appeared on the side of a building at Second and Stevenson streets in the financial district.
The towering display memorializes Zarutska with one of her selfies — an image widely shared online after her death — this time painted in various shades of blue, her blonde hair flowing over one shoulder, surrounded by twinkling lights. Her name and life dates, 2002 – 2025, are written across the bottom.
On the surface, it’s a thoughtful memorial. Zarutska’s murder was a tragedy, its circumstances a testament to the terrifying randomness of life: In August 2025, while commuting home from work at a local pizzeria on a Charlotte light rail train, Zarutska was stabbed to death by Decarlos Brown Jr., a man she did not know and who, by all accounts, had no clear motive for the attack.
Other circumstances of the attack made it the perfect vehicle for right-wing activists, news outlets, and politicians to push their political and cultural agendas, including white nationalism.
Zarutska was young, white, and pretty; Brown is Black, and has a long history of mental health problems, and had been arrested and released 14 times before the stabbing. CCTV footage quickly went viral in the days following the incident, becoming a cause célèbre that dominated the news cycle on channels like Fox News and Breitbart, where pundits would frequently hold photos of Zarutska and Brown’s faces side by side, suggesting by inference a racist framing of innocent victim and remorseless criminal.
The MAGA set seized the opportunity to blame “woke” judges and “soft-on-crime” policies for the deadly attack. In early September, Republican lawmakers in North Carolina put forth a severe criminal reform package dubbed “Iryna’s Law” that eliminates cashless bail and accelerates death penalty procedures.
It was around the same time that Eoghan McCabe got the idea for the murals. The co-founder and CEO of Intercom, a billion-dollar customer service software company, launched the nationwide campaign on X, pledging $500,000 for street artists “to paint the face of Iryna Zarutska” in major US cities. Elon Musk and “manosphere” influencer Andrew Tate both responded in the comments, each pledging $1 million.
McCabe also organized a crowdfundraiser for the project on GiveSendGo, an alternative to GoFundMe popular among the alt-right. The page currently has 883 donations totaling $104,622; the most recent donation was made last month. (It is unclear if Tate followed through on his pledge, but Musk has remained named as a donor as the project has progressed.)
The murals began going up around the country in December in Los Angeles and Washington, DC; later in Chicago, Brooklyn, Miami, Las Vegas, and now, San Francisco. In fact, two Zartuska murals appeared in the city this month, the other located at Pine and Kearny.
In some cities, McCabe’s murals have generated pushback from local progressives and Ukrainian communities, who say the project exploits a random act of violence for conservative political gain. So far, the San Francisco murals have remained untouched and generally unprotested, at least in any organized way. However, the Pine and Kearny mural did make the rounds in early March on Reddit, with commenters mainly unpacking how McCabe, Musk, and other donors are using Zarutska’s face to stoke anti-Black sentiment in the city.
McCabe, an Irish-born tech and media investor, has largely framed the mural project as apolitical, telling The Guardian last month that the murals “aim to memorialize the story of an innocent young woman who was killed in a horrific, senseless crime.” However, McCabe’s political stances are well-documented: He donated $200,000 to Trump’s campaign in May 2024.
Trump himself continued to exploit the Zarutska case in his 2026 State of Union last month. Addressing Zarutska’s mother, Anya, who was invited to the event and seated next to conservative pundit Erika Kirk, he called Iryna “a beautiful daughter, so beautiful, what a beautiful young woman,” and referred to Brown as a “deranged monster.”
Despite what McCabe says, it’s hard to ignore the signals from the supporters of this memorial campaign online: On social media, nearly every post about the project is littered with celebratory “White Lives Matter” content.
It is unclear if more Zarutska murals are planned for San Francisco, or where in the US they will appear next. McCabe’s office did not respond to Gazetteer SF’s request for comment on the project.
