Four people were shot to death on a Chicago commuter train on Labour Day morning while they appeared to be asleep, police said. An unnamed suspect was apprehended shortly after the mass shooting.
The Forest Park Police Department, which operates in a suburb of Chicago, said it received a 911 call just before 5:30 a.m. on Monday that three people had been shot on a subway train at Forest Park Station on the Blue Line. Police rushed to the scene and found three people dead already and a fourth person suffering from gunshot wounds.
The fourth person was transported to the Loyola University Medical Centre where they died from their injuries, police wrote in a press release. The identities of the victims have not been released.
At a press conference, Forest Park Deputy Chief Chris Chin called the shooting “shocking” and “horrible.” He told CNN that the victims may have been homeless and appeared to be sleeping when they were attacked.
“We don’t know for sure what (the victims’) social status is. Looking at the videos, they were asleep on the train,” Chin said.
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The shooter fled the scene after the attack but police worked with the Chicago Transit Authority to review surveillance footage and obtain a description of the suspect. The Chicago Police Department was able to locate the suspected shooter on a different train line, the Pink Line, about an hour and a half after the shooting.
Police took the suspect into custody and recovered a firearm.
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Forest Park Police detectives are continuing to investigate the incident with the help of the West Suburban Major Crimes Task Force. Police write that the shooting appears to be “an isolated incident with no immediate threat to the community.”
The Chicago Transit Authority condemned the shooting as a “heinous and egregious act of violence (that) should never have occurred, nonetheless on a public transit train.”
Forest Park Mayor Rory Hoskins said his community, with a population 14,000, is the only Chicago suburb in Cook County where two major train lines end.
“It’s a horrible tragedy that four people are dead on Labor Day weekend,” Hoskins said. “Our police department and our fire department respond to this location probably more than any other location in our jurisdiction.”
A regular rider, Sean McNulty, had to take a bus Monday because of service interruptions related to the shooting. He said criminal activity sometimes is a reality on the train.
“You just kind of get used to it,” McNulty told the Chicago Tribune. “I keep my eyes open because I want to know what’s going on around me at all times.”
— With files from The Associated Press
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