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.
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 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.
