From CWB Chicago: The man being questioned by Chicago police, suspected of setting a woman on fire as they rode a Blue Line train in the Loop on Monday night, was walking the streets only because a Cook County judge refused to keep him in jail after he allegedly knocked a social worker unconscious at a west suburban psychiatric hospital, court records show.
Rather than detaining the man, who was deemed too dangerous for a psych ward, the judge rejected prosecutors’ requests in August to keep him safely locked in jail. Instead, she sent him home on an ankle monitor. And while clerk of court entries indicate he was on “24/7” electronic monitoring, paperwork shows the judge actually allowed him to leave his home from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays.
CWBChicago is not naming the 50-year-old suspect or the judge who refused to detain him because he has not been charged with Monday’s attack aboard a train near Clark-Lake.
At about 9:25 p.m. Monday, the 26-year-old woman was sitting on the train using her phone when the man walked up and poured liquid from a beverage bottle on her head, a source said. The woman ran through the train car, but he caught up with her and set the liquid, as well as portions of his own body, on fire, according to a source. She was taken to Stroger Hospital in critical condition. He fled the scene and was arrested Tuesday morning near a CTA entrance at Washington and Dearborn — the same entrance the assailant escaped from after the attack.
The report lays out the jaw-dropping details of the suspect’s extensive criminal record, based on court records, including 53 criminal cases file against him just in Cook County since 1993.
Nine of those cases were felony charges, mostly drug-related, and while all ended in guilty pleas, he was only given a jail sentence in two cases. In 2003, the man was sentenced to two years in jail for his fourth drug case, and in 2017, he was slapped with 30 days in jail for repeatedly driving with a suspended license.
Fox News elaborated, saying the 50-year-old suspect has been arrested 22 times since 2016.
It gets even worse…. In 2022 the suspect was sentenced to two years of “mental health probation” after he admittedly ignited “a sizeable fire that damaged the exterior of a government building.”
In August, the man was arrested after he knocked a female social worker unconscious while he was being held in a suburban psychiatric hospital, the report explains. But instead of locking him up, the judge turned him loose with an ankle monitor.
Just last weekend, the report notes that “someone matching the suspect’s general description set a fire outside City Hall on LaSalle Street.” Police haven’t yet confirmed that the train attack suspect is the one who set that fire, but they are investigating that case.
READ MORE from CWB Chicago.
Too dangerous for a psych ward, but OK to walk the streets?
Exclusive: The man suspected of setting a woman on fire on the Blue Line is wearing an ankle monitor after allegedly knocking out a psych ward social worker
A judge refused to keep him in jail.https://t.co/Cjdvytvtdo
— CWBChicago (@CWBChicago) November 19, 2025
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