A man pulled out a gun aboard a CTA bus on Chicago's Southwest Side Tuesday night and ordered the driver not to stop, sending a 35-year-old woman scrambling out a window to escape before police tracked him down and took him into custody.
The confrontation unfolded around 8:25 p.m. on the 5400 block of South Pulaski Avenue, according to police. As WGN-TV reported, the offender displayed the weapon and demanded that the bus not stop, and the 35-year-old woman riding the bus complied before climbing out through a window to get away. The man then fled the bus himself, according to police.
After abandoning the bus, the man got into an unoccupied vehicle that had been left running nearby and was taken into custody shortly after, per the same report. Police recovered a weapon at the scene, and no injuries were reported. Charges against the man remained pending as of the report.
A Second CTA Hijacking in Months
This is not the first time a CTA bus has been commandeered by an armed rider this year. In May, a passenger displayed a 12-inch knife and ordered a bus not to stop on the No. 53 Pulaski route in the 2400 block of North Pulaski Road, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. In that case, the 57-year-old driver also escaped through a window, and a CTA supervisor helped track the bus until police arrested the suspect.
Prosecutors said the suspect in that May incident, identified as Lanell Fields, held the driver captive for nearly an hour with the knife, according to CWB Chicago. The two incidents, months apart but similar in method, point to a pattern of armed riders attempting to seize control of CTA buses mid-route.
CTA Crime Numbers Tell a Mixed Story
The hijackings come against a backdrop of conflicting claims about safety trends across the transit system. A Chicago Tribune analysis found the CTA recorded 20.7 passenger assaults per 100 million passenger miles in 2024, compared with a range of just 4 to 9.5 at peer transit agencies elsewhere in the country. Most comparable systems saw assault rates fall as ridership recovered after the pandemic, but Chicago's rate instead climbed steadily through 2024, the Tribune reported.
Worker safety numbers followed a similar pattern, with the CTA reporting 6.9 worker assaults per 100 million passenger miles in 2024 against a peer range of 1.0 to 3.5, per the same Tribune analysis. The agency has since pointed to improvement: it said systemwide crime had dropped 9% and violent crime on buses fell 19% through the end of February compared with the prior year, and that assaults on transit workers fell 25% in January and 29% in February following a law-enforcement boost added in December.
By June, CTA Acting President Nora Leerhsen said crime was down systemwide for the sixth consecutive month and in nine of the previous 11 months, with serious crime falling 45% and violent crime falling 58% compared with June of the prior year, according to CBS News. Union leaders representing bus and train operators disputed that crime had actually declined, the outlet reported. Separately, the acting CTA president said bus crime specifically fell 40% in April compared with the same month a year earlier, according to NBC Chicago.
No further details on the Nov. 3 suspect's identity or any formal charges have been released, and police have not said how he obtained the running vehicle he climbed into after fleeing the bus.
