A typical ride on Chicago‘s CTA train turned horrific after a man was accused of dousing a woman passenger with a liquid, then doing the unimaginable. Now, he’s been slammed with a federal terrorism charge for a gruesome attack that left the woman with over half of her body burned.
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It all went down on Monday (Nov. 17), just before 9:30 p.m. when a 26-year-old woman entered the city’s CTA Blue Line train station in the city’s Loop district, according to local news station NBC 5.
As the woman, whose identity has been withheld, was minding her own business sitting in her seat, Lawrence Reed of Chicago approached her before removing “the cap off a bottle of liquid,” authorities say. He’s accused of pouring “the liquid all over the victim’s head and body.” But that’s not all.
When the woman began to run away, Reed allegedly ignited the bottle with a lighter after he managed to catch up to her. It fell out of his hand, according to the criminal complaint, but picked it up as it burned and used the bottle to set the woman on fire.
She was immediately engulfed in flames. Disturbing surveillence captured her trying to put the fire out by rolling on the train car’s floor.
ABC News says the woman, who escaped the train but collapsed on the platform, is still in the hospital with “critical injuries,” including burns on her head and more than half of her body.
Police initially thought the attack wasn’t random at all, as they suspected the pair were in an argument beforehand, according to NBC 5. But the criminal complaint and the U.S. Attorney’s Office didn’t cite an exchange between Reed and the woman.
Reed was arrested on Tuesday (Nov. 18) and charged with committing a terrorist attack against a mass transportation system, per the U.S. Attorney’s Office. An investigation revealed the 50-year-old had “purchased gasoline at a gas station and filled it in a hand-held container approximately 20 minutes before the incident on the train.”
“This horrific attack was not just a barbaric assault on an innocent woman riding a train, but an act of terrorism that strikes at the core of our American way of life,” Andrew S. Boutros, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said, promising to “take immediate and resolute action to bring swift justice to the victim.”
During his initial hearing Wednesday, Reed — who CBS News said had 49 prior arrests, including 10 felony cases — had multiple outbursts, screaming to the judge, “Don’t talk to me!” and “I am guilty!” He also claimed that he’s a citizen of China and asked the judge to notify the Chinese Consulate of his arrest.
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