Four people were killed in a Monday morning shooting on a CTA Blue Line train in Forest Park, the west suburban village’s police said.
Officers were dispatched to the Forest Park Blue Line station, 711 Des Plaines Ave., at 5:27 a.m. Monday after someone called 911 to report three people were shot on a train, Forest Park police said in a statement.
Three people were pronounced dead at the scene, police said, and a fourth shooting victim was pronounced dead soon after at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood. The ages and identities of the victims were not disclosed, but a representative for the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office confirmed the four fatalities.
Forest Park police said a suspect was later taken into custody on the Pink Line by Chicago Police officers and a weapon was recovered.
Cicely and Matt Gould said the shooting is not typical for their family-oriented hometown or a reflection on local crime.
“It’s pretty shocking because (the community) is so safe,” said Cicely Gould, who Monday afternoon hung out at a local park with her husband and two daughters, Harlem, 4, and 2-year-old Harper, before heading to get ice cream.
“When I saw it online this morning, I read it out loud to (Matt). I mean, the shooting was literally right up the street from my house. But I wouldn’t say it’s a community thing. I feel very safe here. That’s pretty much where the end of the line is for the train, so it’s really busy.”
Standing in the parking lot of the Blue Line station in Forest Park on Monday afternoon, Logan Square resident Sean McNulty said he had to take a shuttle bus for the last part of his commute because service still was interrupted between Austin and Forest Park. McNulty said he takes the Blue Line most mornings at 4 a.m. to get to his job at a Bensenville cabinet-making company.
Unaware of the early morning shooting, McNulty said he wasn’t surprised by the violence. Though his train typically is filled with other workers and folks catching an early morning flight at O’Hare, McNulty said he has seen gang and other criminal activity as a longtime commuter.
“It’s mass transit,” he said, while puffing a cigarette. “It’s going to be full of all sorts of weird people. You just kind of get used to it. I keep my eyes open because I want to know what’s going on around me at all times.”
Hours after the shooting, Forest Park Mayor Rory Hoskins called the shooting “an outlier,” but added that the village’s first responders are frequently dispatched to the Blue Line station. Hoskins also called for more safety resources at the station as part of any potential reorganization of local mass transit agencies.
“To the extent that our leaders in Springfield are considering any kind of CTA-mass transit reorganization, we would ask them to consider investing additional resources in terms of safety, public safety, law enforcement personnel, what have you, to support a small community like Forest Park that has to respond to two major train lines ending in Forest Park,” Hoskins said.
In an emailed statement Monday, a CTA spokesperson said “this heinous and egregious act of violence should never have occurred, none the less on a public transit train.”
“As soon as this matter was reported, CTA immediately deployed resources to assist the Forest Park Police in their investigation into the matter, including review of all possible security camera footage, which proved to be vital in aiding local enforcement,” the agency’s statement said.
The shooting was the first multi-victim homicide to occur on a CTA train in at least 30 years, according to city violence data, and it was the first fatal shooting of the year on a CTA train or at a station. One other homicide occurred in January at the Roosevelt station in the South Loop, records show.
The mass shooting occurred less than a week after the CTA announced an AI-based program that seeks to more quickly notify police when guns are detected at CTA train stations.
Blue Line train service was suspended between the Forest Park and Austin stations as police continue to investigate.
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