A Chicago Transit Authority employee was fatally stabbed at the Green Line Damen Avenue station Thursday afternoon, according to police and fire officials.
The employee sustained multiple stab wounds to his neck at the Near West Side station around 3 p.m., according to an internal police notification obtained by the Tribune. The employee was transported to Stroger Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead at 3:42 p.m., the notification stated.
A spokesperson for the Chicago Fire Department confirmed to the Tribune that paramedics were called to the Near West Side station before 3:30 p.m. for a transport. The person’s condition was initially classified as “red,” the spokesperson said. Red is considered serious-to-critical condition.
Police said an unknown male attacker approached a 41-year-old victim inside the mezzanine area of a train station in the 2000 block of West Lake Street and engaged in a “verbal altercation” that turned physical. The attacker “produced a sharp object” and stabbed the man in the neck.
The attacker then fled westbound from the station while the victim was discovered unresponsive in a nearby room, police said. The attacker remained at large as of early Thursday evening as Belmont Area detectives began their investigation. The CTA did not immediately return a request for comment.
Just before 4 p.m., the CTA issued an online alert that Green Line trains were running but bypassing Damen/Lake due to police activity.
The incident comes just over a month after a 29-year-old man was pushed to his death off a CTA Red Line train. Four teens have since been charged in the Sept. 7 death of Kyle Bickham. A 15-year-old boy was the latest charged in the fatal attack. The teen, charged earlier this month, faces one count of first-degree murder, among several other felonies. The three others charged include 18-year-old Christian McBounds, 19-year-old Katlar Parchman and a 15-year-old girl.
For nearly a year now, 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.
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Local transit and law enforcement leaders have touted decreases in serious crimes on public transit this year. Overall, FBI-classified serious crimes on the portion of the CTA within city limits is down 29% year-over-year, according to Chicago police data.
The decreases come as the CTA boosted law enforcement on the system at the behest of the federal government, which threatened to withhold funding from the transit agency in the wake of the Blue Line attack last year.