Mayor Brandon Johnson on Thursday sought to head off concerns about public transit safety after a man was charged with lighting a woman on fire on a CTA Blue Line train.
Asked at an unrelated West Side news conference whether the alleged attacker, Lawrence Reed, should have been out on the street, Johnson did not say directly but maintained the act of violence was not “some sort of trend.”
“The level of accountability that has to happen in this moment, I trust that the federal level will do its part,” Johnson said, before stressing, “All I can say is that as awful and as horrific as this tragedy is, this is an isolated incident. As we continue to invest more in our public transportation system, we want people to feel safe as they ride.”
And asked if the criminal justice system failed Reed, the mayor pivoted to his administration’s spending on mental health resources.
“As you know, mental health, mental health services, is something that’s very critical to me,” Johnson said. “You know I fought hard to reopen mental health clinics, as well as to expand mental health services across the city.”
Later Thursday afternoon, however, Johnson laid blame with the criminal justice and mental health systems.
“This is an absolute failure of our criminal justice, as well as our mental health institutions,” Johnson said during a budget news conference at City Hall, noting the suspect’s long history of felony charges. “He was clearly seriously mentally disturbed and was a danger to himself and to others. The system that we had failed to intervene, and now we have a woman who is fighting for her life.”
Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged Reed with terrorism against a mass transportation system in the apparently unprovoked attack. The 50-year-old was arrested while on pretrial release for an aggravated battery case and has several prior cases in his criminal history, including a 2020 conviction for aggravated arson for an attempt to set the Thompson Center on fire.
Prosecutors said Reed approached a young woman on a Blue Line train late Monday, took out an iced tea bottle and poured clear liquid onto her head, then set her on fire.
Chris Amon, special agent in charge of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Chicago, said Wednesday that given Reed’s extensive criminal record, he had “no business being on the streets.”
“Reed had plenty of second chances by the criminal justice system, and as a result we have an innocent victim in the hospital fighting for her life,” Amon said at a news conference after the charge was filed.
Reed is set to have a detention hearing Friday, and federal prosecutors said they would lay out his criminal background then.
Johnson has tried to convince residents that CTA trains are safe, in the face of flagging ridership numbers since the pandemic. Meanwhile, the Blue Line attack has already drawn the ire of White House officials who have frequently targeted blue cities’ public transit safety.
The CTA’s acting president, Nora Leerhsen, defended the agency’s safety practices in a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy last month, claiming crime on the Blue Line specifically had dropped 30% over last year, and overall CTA crime was down 12% over 2022 levels.
Data analyzed by the Tribune showed that there were seven homicides and eight shootings on the CTA between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30 this year, down from nine homicides and 14 shootings during the same time period in 2022.
Robberies dropped from 414 to 364 and thefts decreased from 725 in 2022 to 560 in 2025 for the first nine months of each year. The number of criminal sexual assaults logged on CTA property increased by one during the two reporting periods in 2022 and 2025.
Reed is also a suspect in an apparent arson outside City Hall that unfolded days before the Blue Line attack.
