Authorities have charged a 51-year-old man with threatening a CTA bus driver with a knife and forcing her to drive about six miles before the bus driver was able to escape out a window, Chicago police said.
Lanell Fields, of Little Village, faces felony counts of aggravated armed kidnapping, aggravated assault against a state employee and aggravated unlawful restraint, police said. He’s set to appear in court Friday.
According to a police report obtained by the Tribune, Fields had been a passenger on a #53 bus for about 15 minutes early Wednesday morning when he stood up and took out a large knife. The rest of the passengers disembarked near Pulaski and Fullerton, the report stated, and Fields approached the bus driver with the knife.
Fields allegedly told the driver, “I have to go to the hospital, drive the (expletive) bus” and said “you had better not open the door.” The driver continued to drive along the bus route as Fields waved the knife, the report alleged, and told her to “hit the gas” at stop lights or when she was driving slowly.
The driver took the bus off its route near the intersection of Pulaski and Belmont, the report stated, and drove with Fields still threatening her and flailing with the knife to the intersection of Clark Street and Delaware Place in the River North neighborhood. There, the driver saw a 56-year old man who was flagging the bus down and jumped out the bus window, the report stated.
Fields left the bus through the main door and was arrested shortly afterward, according to the police report. The driver and the man who flagged down the bus took cover in the man’s CTA vehicle, the report stated.
Fields was arrested twice in October 2025 for trespassing and fare evasion on CTA property, Chicago police records show.
