Police: Woman stabbed to death on Red Line in domestic attack

TCR NEWS
25 Jun 2016



Police: Woman stabbed to death on Red Line in domestic attack


A woman was stabbed to death and a man was taken into custody Thursday in a midday attack on the CTA Red Line that police described as a domestic dispute.


The fatal attack, a rarity on CTA trains, prompted passengers to flee, screaming in horror, a witness said. The CTA rerouted trains and shut down service to the 47th Street station for several hours while police investigated.


The incident happened on a southbound train as it was pulling into the station about 12:35 p.m., police said. A man stabbed the woman multiple times, and she died at the scene, police First Deputy Superintendent John Escalante said at a news conference about two hours after the killing.


Police took the man into custody shortly after and charges were pending against him Thursday night, police said. The woman was stabbed in the neck, a source said. Witnesses told police they heard the couple mention a child while they were apparently quarreling, Escalante said.



"This was domestic in nature. We're sure of that," Escalante said in the news conference just outside the 47th Street station.


Family members identified the woman as Jessica Hampton, 25. They said Hampton, mother of a young daughter, was trying to get her life back on track after problems with sobriety. The young woman used the family home on South Laflin Street as her address, though she lived elsewhere, her aunt Delores Frazier said.


Frazier showed off two photos of the young woman in happier times: one last Christmastime and another of her smiling with her mother.


The family said they had only recently met a young man she apparently was dating but had no information about him.


The attack was witnessed by numerous passengers on the train car and was captured by "an extensive network" of video surveillance cameras onboard, Escalante said. "We do believe that the CTA surveillance video will aid this investigation tremendously," he said.


The first officer on the scene took the attacker into custody on the train platform without a struggle, Escalante said. He was taken to St. Bernard Hospital and Healthcare Center to get stitches for wounds suffered during the attack, police said.


For Andrea Patterson, the horror of watching a fatal stabbing on an “L” car was compounded when she was later told by relatives that she and Hampton are cousins.


Patterson said she had her headphones on and was sitting near the victim. The attacker sat across from them both when the man asked Hampton a question.


“I don't know what was the question … I did hear her say 'no' and she shook her head no," Patterson said.


The man then stood up and stabbed the victim.


"She was fighting back, she was crying 'help me, help me!'" Patterson said. The knife briefly fell out of the attacker's hand, but he quickly retrieved and resumed the attack. Other people fled the train car, Patterson said.


The woman struggled with the man and fell to her knees. He grabbed her neck and slit her throat and her torso before the woman fell to the floor, according to Patterson. After inflicting the fatal wounds, the attacker stood over the woman and said something, Patterson said.


"As the doors opened on the train, he walked off, stepped over her body and walked off like nothing happened," Patterson said.


Passenger Zoe Johnson was just getting off the outbound train at the 47th Street stop when riders on the car behind her ran away screaming.


"When we stopped on 47th, I was about to get off but people (were) running off the train screaming, calling for help, saying, 'Call 911,'" she said as she stood next to the Dan Ryan Expressway looking down at police on the platform.


The last time someone was killed on CTA property was March 16, 2013, when a man was beaten to death on the 43rd Street Green Line platform.


On March 28, 2011, a teenager pushed a woman down the stairs to her death at the Fullerton Red/Purple/Brown Line station while trying to flee with a stolen cellphone. Prince Watson, 19, was sentenced in 2013 to 32 years in prison for the murder of Sally Katona-King, 68, a mother of three.


In 2003, a man was shot to death on a northbound Red Line train as it approached the Argyle station. The gunman fled.


In January, Mayor Rahm Emanuel touted a drop in crime on CTA property, with officials saying incidents had fallen for four straight years. Overall crime was down 25 percent by the end of 2015, the CTA said, crediting an expanded network of security cameras as well as police patrols and undercover operations for the decline.


But a Tribune analysis of city crime data earlier this year showed CTA did not include in its analysis crimes at bus stops. With bus-stop crimes included, overall crime showed a 23 percent decrease in 2015 over the previous year.


Thursday's incident halted CTA traffic to the 47th Street station, with trains operating on a single track between 35th Street and Garfield Boulevard for several hours and bypassing the station. By midafternoon, service had resumed.


CHICAGO TRIBUNE

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