AP
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged a man with committing a terrorist attack for allegedly setting a woman on fire<\/a> on a Chicago train.\n <\/p>\n \n Lawrence Reed was sitting at the back of a car on a Blue Line L train on Monday night when he approached a woman as she sat with her back to him, according to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrest affidavit. Reed removed the cap from a plastic bottle, then doused the woman with what was believed to be gasoline, the affidavit said.\n <\/p>\n \n The 26-year-old woman then ran to the back of the train car. Reed ignited the bottle, approached the woman and set her on fire, according to the affidavit. Surveillance video showed Reed at a gas station about 30 minutes before the attack, filling a small container with gasoline, the affidavit says.\n <\/p>\n \n The federal charge against Reed, 50, of Chicago, carries a maximum penalty of life in prison.\n <\/p>\n \n Federal court records do not show whether Reed has an attorney representing him in the federal case. Chicago outlets reported that Reed was disruptive during his first appearance in a federal court on Wednesday afternoon, including yelling over the judge that he wanted to represent himself and claiming that he was a Chinese citizen.\n <\/p>\n \n Reed shouted, \u201cI plead guilty!\u201d repeatedly as the judge tried to advise him of his rights, according to local news reports.\n <\/p>\n \n After the attack, the train the woman was on pulled into a stop downtown. Reed walked away and the woman stumbled out and fell on the ground, police said. She was taken to a hospital in critical condition with severe burns to her head and body, authorities said. Officials have not released her name.\n <\/p>\n \n Chicago police said that when they arrested him Tuesday morning he made incriminating statements about the attack. He was wearing the same clothes as the man who attacked the woman on the train, according to the affidavit.\n <\/p>\n \n Reed carried out the attack \u201cwith the intent to cause death and serious bodily injury to one or more persons\u201d on the train, the ATF investigator wrote.\n <\/p>\n \n Chicago police did not answer questions Wednesday by The Associated Press on whether it had or would refer charges against Reed to state prosecutors, instead referring all questions to federal authorities.\n <\/p>\n \n Monday\u2019s attack drew comparisons to an August stabbing on a commuter train in Charlotte, North Carolina, that left another young woman dead. Federal authorities have charged a man with fatally stabbing 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska<\/a>, a Ukrainian refugee, in an apparent random attack.\n <\/p>\n \n Chicago<\/a> and other Democratic-led cities have been the focus of intense criticism from President Donald Trump and his administration, who have characterized them as crime-ridden despite a drop in violent crime after a pandemic-era spike<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n That criticism continued after Monday\u2019s attack in Chicago, with U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy highlighting it in a social media post.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThis horrific attack is EXACTLY why we need communities to take safety seriously. Blue cities cannot allow another Iryna Zarutska to happen,\u201d Duffy wrote on X.\n <\/p>\n \n The Chicago Transit Authority said it was working closely with police in the investigation and that it has a multipronged approach to security, including the use of surveillance cameras.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AP \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged a man with committing a terrorist attack for allegedly setting a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-302323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}