The family of a man fatally stabbed while he slept on a Blue Line train earlier this year is suing the Chicago Transit Authority, alleging the agency failed to provide him the adequate care and security it owes to passengers.
In January, 37-year-old Dominique Pollion was stabbed twice in a train car while his attacker filmed the entire incident on his phone. Days after the stabbing, Demetrius Thurman, 40, of the Woodlawn neighborhood, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the killing.
The lawsuit — filed in Cook County Circuit Court on Monday by Chicago-based firm Romanucci & Blandin on behalf of Pollion’s family — lays out nine allegations of wrongdoing, including wrongful death, negligence, survival action and willful and wanton misconduct. The CTA, Thurman and two private security contractors are named as defendants. Shirley Pollion-Hines, Pollion’s grandmother and independent administrator of his estate, is the plaintiff.
The complaint seeks a jury trial.
“Words cannot express how I feel as his grandmother,” Pollion-Hines said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon at Romanucci & Blandin’s downtown office, announcing the lawsuit.
“God would have forgiven Dominique’s killer, and our family is trying to do that,” she said. “But what we cannot forgive is how CTA has abandoned people, like Dominique, who count on public transportation to live their lives.”
In the early morning hours of Jan. 10, Pollion had been sleeping on a Blue Line train car for about an hour when, just after 2:15 a.m., Thurman walked into the car and approached from behind with a phone in his right hand and a knife in his left, prosecutors alleged at Thurman’s initial detention hearing.
As Pollion continued to sleep, Thurman hit record on his phone, then stabbed Pollion twice, prosecutors alleged. Pollion stood up and screamed, then backed down the aisle. As Pollion backed away, Thurman followed, turning his cellphone to film himself, according to prosecutors.
Pollion eventually collapsed, while Thurman walked away, toward a different car. Soon after, the train stopped at the Clark and Lake Blue Line station, where a passenger alerted security officers patrolling the platform, according to prosecutors’ account.
As the officers entered the car where Pollion was, Thurman began recording again. He recorded the officers trying to determine what was happening, then turned the camera back on himself and stated, “Somebody got his a–,” before leaving the CTA station, prosecutors said. Pollion was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. His death was ruled a homicide.
Using a still photo taken from CTA surveillance footage of the incident, authorities issued a bulletin seeking help in identifying the suspect. A Chicago police officer who had encountered Thurman sleeping on a Blue Line train days before the stabbing recognized him from the bulletin, prosecutors said.
More Top Picks Best Heat Exchanger Espresso Machines
Thurman has pleaded not guilty to all three felony charges against him, court records show. His next hearing is scheduled for later this month.
Monday’s complaint alleges: “Had the CTA maintained adequate security and surveillance during overnight hours, or had appropriate follow-up occurred after the prior police encounter with Thurman on the Blue Line, the attack on Mr. Pollion could have been prevented.”
The lawsuit roots its allegations in “CTA’s known and documented security failures.”
The CTA has been under heightened pressure to reduce crime on public transit since a particularly horrific attack last November in which a 26-year-old woman was doused with gasoline and lit on fire while riding the Blue Line downtown. President Donald Trump’s administration seized on that attack in threats to withhold millions in federal funding unless the CTA addressed crime to its satisfaction.
Following the funding threats, the CTA boosted law enforcement staffing hours by 75% and brought in members of the Cook County sheriff’s police to patrol the city’s rail system.
In recent months, local law enforcement have touted significant decreases in crime on the CTA. Year-over-year, FBI-classified serious crimes are down nearly 29% on the portion of the CTA within city limits, according to Chicago police data.
A CTA spokesperson, in response to a request for comment on recent legal filings, stated that the agency is unable to comment on pending litigation.
In their complaint, Pollion’s family argues that the CTA acted with “willful and wanton disregard” by operating with insufficient security measures despite “known violent incidents.” The complaint points to a crime reduction plan that the feds had requested — and initially rejected — amid funding threats late last year, maintaining the rejection was indicative of the agency’s security failures. The feds backed off the funding threats after the CTA submitted a revised security plan in March.
The lawsuit also casts blame on two private security companies, Monterrey Security Consultants Inc. and Action K-9 Security Inc., that had been under contract with the CTA in January “to provide private, unarmed security services on the CTA rail system.” In laying out its own timeline of the attack, the complaint states that after Pollion was stabbed, K-9 Security initially notified the train’s operator that something had happened by using hand gestures to relay there was “a sick passenger.”
Contractors were negligent, the complaint alleges, because they didn’t detect that someone walked on the train with a weapon, failed to communicate clearly that a passenger had been attacked and delayed raising alarm.
In April, the CTA ended its contract with Monterrey in favor of spending on other public safety initiatives, including sworn law enforcement staffing.
A spokesperson for Monterrey Security, in a statement to the Tribune, said the company had not been formally served with a copy of the complaint so it could not comment on specific allegations at this time.
The spokesperson did state, however, that “our records indicate Monterrey Security personnel were not assigned to provide security services aboard CTA Blue Line trains or at the Clark/Lake station during the date and time at issue.”
The company is continuing to review the matter, the spokesperson said.
K-9 Security could not be immediately reached for comment Tuesday.
“Shirley Pollion-Hines should not have had to bury her grandson,” Michael Cerasa, a partner with Romanucci & Blandin, said at Tuesday’s news conference. “He should have been able to relax peacefully on the Blue Line and arrive safely at his destination. Instead, he was failed by a transit agency and their contractors.”
Addressing reporters, Pollion-Hines remembered her grandson for his generosity and compassion.
More Top Picks Best Portable Projector
“It would be easy for Dominique’s life to be just reduced to a statistic or simply a horrible tragedy,” she said. “But you need to know that his life was bigger than how he died.”
Pollion-Hines said she wants accountability.
“Don’t ever doubt,” she said, “that CTA failed Dominique on that day of his death.”
baiduhai’s Talia Soglin contributed.