A 57-year-old man and a 65-year-old woman were shot Wednesday afternoon aboard a Chicago Transit Authority bus in the Englewood neighborhood on the city's South Side. Both victims were injured in the gunfire, which broke out on a CTA-operated bus during the middle of the day.
Details of the shooting remain limited. According to CBS News, the attack unfolded on a CTA bus in Englewood, leaving both a 57-year-old man and a 65-year-old woman hurt. No further information on the circumstances, a possible suspect, or the victims' conditions was included in that report.
A System Already Under Scrutiny
The shooting lands amid mounting concern over violence on Chicago's transit network. Aggravated assaults and batteries on the CTA reached at least a 24-year high in 2025, the Chicago Sun-Times reports, with the newspaper noting the same category of crimes climbed another 33% in 2026 compared with the same period the prior year, according to city data. Chicago police recorded 469 aggravated assaults and batteries on the CTA in 2025, up from 441 the year before, per the same account, and more than half of those attacks happened specifically on trains and buses.
Not every measure points in the same direction, however. The CTA itself has said overall crime fell 8.5% compared with the same period the previous year, with rail crime down 10% and violent crime on buses down 23%, the Sun-Times notes. The Chicago Police Department separately reported that violent crime along CTA train and bus lines fell 33% in April 2026 and was down 15% year to date, according to WTTW.
Federal oversight has also become part of the CTA’s safety response. In December 2025, the Federal Transit Administration issued a special directive requiring the agency to update its safety plans and submit a security plan with crime-reduction targets and a staffing surge. The directive also required the CTA to report its progress to the FTA every two weeks. The order followed the agency’s finding that the CTA had not demonstrated effective, risk-based measures addressing assaults and other safety threats. The FTA’s directive set those requirements.
CTA and the Chicago Police Department expanded transit patrols in December 2025, raising the average number of sworn officers working the system each day from 77 to 120 and adding private K-9 security guards. The voluntary program uses officers who sign up to patrol buses and trains on their days off. The security surge plan was funded by the CTA.
Citywide Shootings Still Climbing
Those transit-specific declines have come even as shootings citywide continued to rise. Chicago recorded 115 shootings in April 2026, up from 106 in April 2025, WTTW reports, and 139 people were shot that month, pushing the year-to-date total to 501 — a 9% increase over the same period in 2025. A separate analysis from the Chicago Tribune found that FBI-classified violent crimes on CTA buses, trains and properties actually decreased by about 5% between 2024 and 2025, and by roughly 10% between 2022 and 2025, based on data through Dec. 21.
The Tribune's review also counted 4,116 crimes reported on CTA buses, trains, platforms, bus stops or garages through Dec. 10, 2025. That tally came in a year that included a Dec. 23 homicide on the Pink Line, which the Tribune identified as the eighth killing on the CTA system in Chicago during 2025.
The response has included coordination among law enforcement and transit agencies, as well as added patrols. In May 2026, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke announced a regional transit task force involving the CTA, Chicago police, the Cook County sheriff, federal agencies, Metra and Pace. The State’s Attorney’s Office also formed an internal CTA task force, with prosecutors receiving training on transit video technology that can support investigations and be introduced as evidence in court. The task force announcement described the effort.
Echoes of a 2019 Bus Attack
Wednesday's shooting is not the first time gunfire has erupted aboard a CTA bus in a South Side neighborhood. In 2019, three people were shot and wounded on a CTA bus in the Chatham neighborhood, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, after a gunman opened fire on a northbound No. 75 bus, striking two teenagers and grazing a man. That same year, city data showed two homicides and five nonfatal shootings occurred on the CTA system within Chicago's limits, per the Tribune's reporting.
No information has been released describing a suspect, a motive, or whether anyone has been taken into custody in connection with Wednesday's Englewood shooting. It also remains unclear whether the incident is connected to any of the other CTA violence cited in recent citywide data.
