A Fox News host has told 2.4 millions viewers in the US that mentally ill homeless people should be given ‘involuntary lethal injection’.
Brian Kilmeade has been forced to apologise for what he described as an ‘extremely callous remark’ during a segment about the killing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The assault, in which the the 23-year-old was stabbed to death, prompted a widespread debate over crime in America.
After Decarlos Brown Jr was arrested and charged with first-degree murder over the attack, Kilmeade said: ‘[Give them] an involuntary lethal injection – or something. Just kill them.’
He made that comment during a discussion with fellow anchors Lawrence Jones and Ainsley Earhardt.
Jones said: ‘A lot of them [mentally ill homeless people] do not want to take the programmes.
‘A lot of them do not want to get the help that is necessary.
‘You cannot give them a choice. Either you take the resources that we are gonna give you, or you decide that you are going to be locked up in jail.
‘That is the way it has to be now.’
The ‘Fox & Friends’ segment aired on Wednesday morning, but seemed to only attract the attention of critics over the weekend.
Journalist Aaron Rupar was one of the people who slammed the clip on social media in a post that has since garnered more than 24 million views on X.
It was only on Sunday evening – five days later – that Kilmeade made an on-air apology.
He said: ‘We were discussing the murder of Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte and how to stop these kinds of attacks byhomeless, mentally ill assailants, including institutionalizing or jailing such people so they cannot attack again.
‘Now during that discussion, I wrongly said they should get lethal injections.
‘I apologize for that extremely callous remark. I am obviously aware that not all mentally ill, homeless people act as the perpetrator did in North Carolina, and that so many homeless people deserve our empathy and compassion.’
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