Cook County prosecutors have charged one person with murder after four people were shot to death Monday morning at the Forest Park Blue Line station, according to Forest Park police.
Cook County prosecutors approved charges of four counts of first-degree murder against Rhianni Davis, 30, police said. A press briefing was scheduled for Tuesday evening where additional details are expected to be disclosed.
Earlier Tuesday, the medical examiner’s office released names for two of the four people killed Monday morning at the station, as officials called attention to safety and security issues on city trains that have long frustrated riders.
Forest Park police were dispatched to the village’s Blue Line station just before 5:30 a.m. Monday after someone called 911 to report that three people were shot on a train car. Three victims were pronounced dead at the scene, while a fourth died at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, police said in a press release.
Sixty-year-old Adrian Collins died of a gunshot wound to his abdomen, an autopsy found, while Simeon Bihesi, 28, died of multiple gunshots. Identities for the other two victims were not yet released.
All four deaths were ruled homicides.
Chicago Police officers took a suspect into custody a short time later on a CTA Pink Line train — authorities didn’t say where the train was — and a weapon was recovered, too, according to Forest Park police.
In a prepared statement Monday, CTA President Dorval R. Carter Jr. called the shooting the “definition of a heinous crime and tragedy” and said all current information points to it being an isolated incident.
“We extend our condolences to those who lost their loved ones as a result of this senseless act of crime — our thoughts and prayers are with them,” Carter said. “The safety and security of our riders and employees is and remains our No. 1 priority.”
The shooting was the first multivictim homicide to occur on a CTA train in at least 30 years, according to available city violence data, and it was the first fatal shooting of the year on a CTA train or at a station. One other homicide occurred in January at the Roosevelt station in the South Loop, records show.
The mass shooting occurred less than a week after the CTA announced an AI-based program that seeks to more quickly notify police when guns are detected at CTA train stations.
Hours after the shooting, Forest Park Mayor Rory Hoskins called the violence “an outlier,” but added that the village’s first responders are frequently dispatched to the Blue Line station. Hoskins also called for more safety resources at the station as part of any potential reorganization of local mass transit agencies.
“To the extent that our leaders in Springfield are considering any kind of CTA-mass transit reorganization, we would ask them to consider investing additional resources in terms of safety, public safety, law enforcement personnel, what have you, to support a small community like Forest Park that has to respond to two major train lines ending in Forest Park,” Hoskins said.
The high-profile tragedy along a major Chicago-area transit line comes as the Illinois General Assembly continues to mull what transit in the region could look like in the future, including whether the CTA should be consolidated with Metra and Pace into one agency and how to address a transit fiscal cliff expected when federal pandemic aid runs out, which could be as soon as 2025.
The region’s transit agencies face a combined $730 million budget hole and the agencies have warned that failure to plug the hole could lead to catastrophic service cuts and fare increases.
But at an unrelated event in Tuesday, Pritzker said “the broader question” of why isn’t there enough security being provided on the CTA needs to be addressed.
“And of course Springfield is going to be a very important part of that. We’re not the only funder or the only available partner in that but certainly we’re trying to put together a plan that will make sense for the future and that will keep people safe on public transit,” said Pritzker. “But we’ve got to make sure we can afford to not just to make our current system operate the way it should but also build it because we need more, not less, public transit.”
In recent months, there’s been a series of hearings held by the Illinois Senate’s Transportation Committee over ways to improve the Chicago-area transit systems in light of a possible fiscal cliff. On Tuesday, state Sen. Ram Villivalam, a Chicago Democrat who heads the committee, said through the hearings “we’ve learned close to $100 million is being spent on safety throughout the CTA, Metra, Pace public transit systems.”
“How is it being spent? Is it working? Clearly not,” said Villivalam. “And the third piece is what can we do to improve? I look at having a holistic approach where we’re not having five or six different piecemeal entities trying to provide safety.”
“We need to make sure that safety is the number one priority for our public transit and accountability and transparency around that is incredibly important,” he said.
Villivalam also acknowledged that embattled CTA President Dorval Carter, who’s faced intense criticism from people who think he’s running the transit agency inefficiently, needs to explain what happened on Monday that led to the quadruple homicide.
“He has shown up to all four Senate Transportation Committee hearings that we’ve had throughout the RTA region. That being said, there’s no question that it’s going to be impossible for the Illinois General Assembly to vote for funding even if the service plans for improvement and expansion are presented properly,” said Villivalam. “Unless people are safe, unless they feel safe it’s not going to be something that the Illinois General Assembly is going to move forward with.”
Asked on Tuesday if CTA’s new AI gun-detecting technology was used during the shooting or aftermath, or if the agency would be sending additional security guards to the area, the agency said only the AI technology is not available on trains, only in stations.
“Beyond that, we are unable to comment on the specifics of our security strategies, including locations equipped with (the AI) technology,” spokeswoman Catherine Hosinski said in a statement. “That said, we can say that each day, CTA’s Security Dept. works in close coordination with the Chicago Police Department, as well as suburban police departments within the CTA service region, to strategically deploy resources based on recent security data and information.”
Chicago Tribune’s Sarah Freishtat contributed.
