The Kenwood man accused of fatally stabbing a CTA janitor last week was on electronic monitoring when the attack broke out, prosecutors alleged at an initial hearing in the case over the weekend, a development that has prompted the Cook County state’s attorney’s office to once again call for reforms with the technology.
Chevazz Campbell, 37, faces one count of first-degree murder alongside several other charges, among them armed robbery and illegal possession of a firearm by a previously convicted felon.
At a detention hearing on Sunday, prosecutors, as they petitioned the court to deny Campbell pretrial release, stated that he was already on electronic monitoring as a condition of probation for two other felony cases when he allegedly maced, pursued and ultimately fatally stabbed 41-year-old Julian Mobley at the Damen Green Line station.
After the hearing, where Judge James Vincent Murphy ordered Campbell held pending trial, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke and the president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 308 issued a joint statement pressing for changes to the state’s electronic monitoring system.
“The failures of our electronic monitoring system could not be clearer: there is not effective monitoring or proactive enforcement when someone is unaccounted for, and that poses a grave risk to public safety,” Burke and Pennie McCoach said in the statement.
For years, electronic monitoring has been a lightning rod in ongoing conversations about how best to keep the public safe and create a fairer criminal justice system.
The statement from Burke and McCoach received some pushback as critics argued that they have seized on an outlier case. Advocates for criminal reform have long pointed out that a small portion of the population on electronic monitoring or pretrial release go on to commit violent offenses.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell Jr. said Burke was “cherry-picking tragic cases to justify policies that would lock up tens of thousands of people is exactly what leads to mass incarceration.”
“The state’s attorney’s push to make changes to electronic monitoring is not based on data, will not make our communities safer, and would result in a tremendous waste of public resources,” the statement said.
The Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice, which worked to help pass landmark legislation that abolished cash bail in Illinois, also released a statement criticizing Burke, adding that Campbell was on electronic monitoring as a condition of probation for nonviolent retail theft convictions.
“We are saddened to learn of CTA worker Julian Mobley’s death and our hearts go out to his family and friends,” the statement said. “It is disappointing, but unsurprising, that Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke views Mr. Mobley’s death as an opportunity to continue her pursuit of regressive policy proposals.”
According to the prosecution’s proffer, Campbell had entered the Damen Green Line station last Thursday just before 3 p.m. and initially headed toward the customer service kiosk. Carrying a gray Adidas duffel and a smaller black cross-body bag, Campbell began jumping over the handicap accessible gate to the station, prompting a CTA employee seated inside the customer service kiosk to knock on their window in an attempt to get him to stop, prosecutors stated.
After successfully jumping the gate without paying, Campbell argued with the employee in the kiosk. As he argued, Campbell used several racial slurs, prosecutors alleged. Through the course of the altercation, Mobley swept the exterior of the station, prosecutors said. Mobley worked his way into the station and became aware of the altercation, and Mobley began speaking with Campbell.
They argued back and forth, then Campbell told Mobley he had something to show him, prosecutors alleged. Campbell briefly left the station and while outside, he was captured on surveillance footage taking an item out from his cross-body bag before returning to the station, approaching Mobley and spraying him with mace twice, prosecutors stated.
Mobley ran out of the station. Following in pursuit, Campbell took out a knife from his bag, then stabbed Mobley once in the neck, prosecutors said, noting the attack was captured on surveillance video.
Mobley fled to a janitor’s closet. Meanwhile, Campbell picked up several items that Mobley had dropped during the attack, including his CTA ID card and work phone, prosecutors said. Campbell then ran off in an alley just south of the Damen station.
A trail of blood led responding firefighters to where Mobley lay unconscious in the janitor’s closet. Mobley was transported to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead soon afterward.
At a news conference livestreamed by Fox 32 Chicago hours after the incident, ATU Local 308 identified Mobley as a father and husband who leaves behind two kids and his wife of 20 years.
After fleeing the scene, Campbell was caught on various surveillance videos bending down near a storm drain — where detectives later recovered Mobley’s phone and ID — then stopping at a convenience store, where he turned his jacket inside out and asked the store owner to borrow a hat, prosecutors alleged.
Eventually, Campbell turned himself in to the Englewood (7th) District police station later that night and told officers he was the person who stabbed someone at the Damen Green Line Station, according to an arrest report included in court filings.
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At the time of his arrest, Campbell had five active arrest warrants, the report states.
In 2019, Campbell was sentenced to three years in prison for stabbing someone multiple times while out in public. Court records show that Campbell has been arrested multiple times in more recent years, mostly for retail theft from places like a West Loop Lululemon, the State Street Macy’s and a downtown Sunglass Hut.
In their joint statement, Burke and McCoach said Campbell had been on electronic monitoring following a retail theft conviction but had repeatedly violated his probation before the stabbing.
“On at least four occasions … prosecutors filed to violate the defendant’s probation because of repeated curfew violations, including multiple periods when he was out of compliance for hours at a time,” they said.
Campbell’s violations were “repeatedly ignored,” Burke and McCoach further stated, “because there is a lack of oversight.”
Earlier this year, questions over the technology surfaced after Alphanso Talley, while on electronic monitoring, allegedly shot and killed a Chicago police officer and injured another at a North Side hospital. His device had been shut off about seven weeks before the shooting.
In the wake of last week’s stabbing, Burke and McCoach are calling for “a permanent legislative solution to close these gaps, strengthen accountability, and better protect people like Julian, who deserve to be safe on the job and return home to their families after work.”
baiduhai’s Caroline Kubzansky contributed.