FROM DAILY MAIL: An Illinois judge ignored a prosecutor’s warnings that a man who is now accused of setting a commuter on fire was likely to attack again and allowed him to walk free, court records show.
Lawrence Reed, 50, was released on an ankle monitor after assaulting a social worker in August, CBS News reported.
Despite the prosecutor warning Cook County Judge Teresa Molina-Gonzalez that Reed had a lengthy rap sheet and his next crime would ‘likely be violent,’ she allowed him to walk free.
Reed went on to be hit with a federal terrorism charge this week after he allegedly poured gasoline on a 26-year-old woman at random and set her ablaze on the Chicago transit system Monday night.
Molina-Gonzalez had released Reed in August, saying, “I can’t keep everybody in jail because the state’s attorney wants me to.”
CWB Chicago reports:
Those 13 words may linger in the mind of Cook County Judge Teresa Molina-Gonzalez for a long, long time. Because that’s what she told a Cook County assistant state’s attorney on August 22 when the prosecutor objected to the judge releasing Lawrence Reed, the man accused of setting a woman on fire aboard a Blue Line train this week, on an ankle monitor, a court transcript shows.
She released Reed on the ankle monitor after a prosecutor, hauntingly, in retrospect, warned that electronic monitoring “could not protect the victim or the community from another vicious, random, and spontaneous attack.”
Monday’s attack has drawn comparisons to the killing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a light rail train in Charlotte, North Carolina, on August 22.
Molina-Gonzalez rejected the state’s detention petition for Reed after Assistant State’s Attorney Jerrilyn Gumila showed her a video of Reed assaulting a social worker inside the locked psychiatric wing of MacNeal Hospital in the west suburbs.
CWB reports, “As a surveillance camera recorded everything, the social worker was speaking with Reed at the nurse’s station around 10:20 a.m. on August 19 when he ‘became irate and slapped the victim in the face with an open palm,’ Gumila said. ‘Her vision went black and she lost consciousness for several seconds. One of the victim’s co-workers rushed over and helped the victim walk down to her office, and the victim was then taken to the emergency room.”
In the Monday incident, Reed is charged with committing a terrorist attack or violence against a mass transportation system, according to a recently filed criminal complaint.
According to federal prosecutors, Reed intentionally used gasoline and a lighter to set a woman on fire aboard a CTA Blue Line train.
“It’s almost certainly the heaviest charge the government could have brought. And it’s not a reach for them. As long as he had the mental capacity to do what he’s charged with doing, the government could prove these elements of the crime,” ABC7 Chicago legal analyst Gil Soffer said.
Fox News reports:
U.S. District Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Andrew Boutros said the woman was “minding her own business and reading her phone” while seated in the middle of the train car, when Reed approached her from the back of the car, doused her head and body with gasoline, and attempted to ignite the liquid.
The woman ran to the back of the car, as he ignited the rest of the liquid in the bottle and then used it to light her on fire, according to the complaint.
Footage allegedly showed Reed watching the woman, engulfed in flames, as she tried to put out the fire by rolling on the floor.
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