The suspect who set fire to a woman aboard a train in Chicago had been out of his home for over 12 hours, violating his electronic monitoring agreement to stay at home, and nobody cared.
Specifically, the authorities in charge of enforcing the suspect received repeated warnings and never tracked him down. They apparently didn’t care. And now a woman is fighting for her life because of them.
Here’s more from CWBChicago:
The man accused of setting a woman on fire aboard a Blue Line train this week repeatedly violated his electronic monitoring program by leaving his home without permission for extended periods, CWBChicago has learned. And, records show, when Lawrence Reed randomly poured gasoline on the 26-year-old woman and set her ablaze on Monday night, he had been out of his home without permission for more than 12 hours.
Despite repeated, sometimes lengthy violations, he was never apprehended by personnel from the office of Chief Judge Timothy Evans, who are responsible for operating the program. A spokesperson for the office declined to comment on what efforts, if any, were taken to locate Reed, saying “This information would likely also be protected as part of the pretrial record, so we would not release it without the defendant’s express permission.”
The violations were noted in a court filing prepared by “pretrial officers” in Evans’ office after Reed was federally charged with terrorism aboard mass transit on Wednesday.
Reed had been wearing an ankle monitor since Cook County Judge Teresa Molina-Gonzalez rejected a prosecution request on August 22 to keep him in jail pending trial on felony allegations that he knocked a social worker unconscious because he was frustrated at being held longer than he anticipated at MacNeal Hospital’s secure psychiatric ward.
Shortly after 9 p.m. Monday, federal prosecutors say, Reed filled a beverage container with gasoline at a West Side service station and boarded a train toward downtown. At about 9:25 p.m., he walked between train cars, approached a seated female passenger from behind, and poured the gasoline on her head and body, officials said.
She ran to the back of the train car in a frantic attempt to escape, but he followed and set her ablaze, prosecutors said. The woman continued to burn inside the car as Reed looked on, and other passengers did nothing to help her, according to the feds.
CTA surveillance video reviewed by CWBChicago showed the woman, still fully engulfed in flames, burst from the train when its doors opened at Clark-Lake moments later.
This felon should have never been on electronic monitoring in the first place. He should have been locked away for a long time. These Democrat judicial systems only protect the criminals, leaving the rest of us in danger. That’s the opposite of what is supposed to happen.
