Shooting on Chicago ‘L’ Train Leaves Four Dead

Four people were killed during a shooting on Chicago’s train system, known as the “L,” on Monday morning, according to police.

Just before 5:30 a.m. local time, police received a call that three people had been struck by bullets on a train at the Forest Park CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) Blue Line station. Forest Park police rushed to the scene and found four shooting victims. Three were pronounced dead on the scene, and the fourth later died at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois.

The suspected shooter fled the scene, but Chicago police were able to track down the person using a description from surveillance footage. The suspect was taken into police custody on a CTA Pink Line train in Chicago. A firearm was recovered, but it was not immediately clear if it was the same gun used in the shooting. An investigation into the shooting is ongoing, but police said that it appears to be an isolated incident with no other threat to the public.

In Chicago, almost 3,000 people were shot in 2023, according to The Trace, a nonprofit gun-related news outlet. This, however, is down from the year before. The number of shootings in Chicago decreased by roughly 16 percent from 2022. As of August 12, shootings in the Windy City dropped by 2 percent from this time last year.

Newsweek reached out by phone to the Forest Park police for further information.

“Although this was an isolated incident, this heinous and egregious act of violence should never have occurred, none the less on a public transit train,” the CTA said in a statement.

“We commend both the Forest Park Police Department for their thorough and collaborative efforts to provide information to partner agencies; as well as the Chicago Police Department whose quick actions led to the apprehension of a suspect in this matter,” the CTA said.

Gun violence continues to plague the nation, with 11,451 gun deaths and 22,011 gun-related injuries so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that collects data on gun violence incidents in the U.S. Of those gun violence incidents, 376 have been mass shootings, which the Gun Violence Archive defines as an incident in which four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.

“Gun violence leaves a scar in the city,” Chicago resident Lakaya Knight, 19, told The Trace in an August 16 article. “It doesn’t even matter what age, if you’re a baby or you’re old—it’s like a ticking time bomb,” she said about the trauma left by gun violence.