Man accused in fiery Blue Line gasoline attack was AWOL from home detention, court records show

The man charged with setting fire to a woman on a CTA Blue Line L train repeatedly violated the conditions of his home detention in a separate criminal case in the weeks before the CTA attack, court records show.

Lawrence Reed has been charged in federal court with terrorism, accused of pouring gasoline on a woman and setting her on fire Monday. She was able to get off the train at the platform at Clark and Lake streets downtown. She suffered severe burns all over her body.

On Friday, a federal magistrate judge ordered Reed held in custody. Reed agreed, asking the judge repeatedly to “just make sure I eat.”

A prosecutor called the Blue Line crime “barbaric.” He said the woman burned for a full minute. And he told the judge Reed had been arrested 72 times in 32 years.

Separately, Reed, 50, faces an aggravated battery charge in Cook County criminal court in an Aug. 19 attack at MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn. He’s accused in that case of attacking a social worker while a psychiatric patient there.

A judge in that case had freed Reed on electronic monitoring while he awaits trial.

According to court records, Reed has a history of mental illness and dozens of past arrests. His lawyer told a judge he‘s suffered from schizophrenia and depression for 26 years and is the father of three grown children.

A 2024 report filed after Reed was charged with kicking the front door of a building noted that he “takes medication for mental illness and suicidal ideation” and “states he has had previous attempts at harming himself.”

Court records in his August case show he was assigned to stay in at least two shelters.

On Sept. 12, he was ordered to stay 24 hours a day at a shelter in the 4100 block of South Princeton Avenue except for short periods on Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays.

Gregory Butler, who runs the transitional housing shelter on Princeton Avenue, said he Reed had stayed “for less than a month” and that it was “a couple of months ago.”

He said Reed came from Hartgrove Hospital, a mental health clinic on the West Side.

On Sept. 30, Reed was then assigned to stay at a second shelter, in the 10000 block of South Avenue N. It’s unclear whether he stayed there or was assigned elsewhere.

Renee Garcia Hernandez, the owner of the group home on Avenue N, would not say whether Reed made it there.

Of the Blue Line attack, she said, “It is a horrible thing, and I really feel bad for anyone, especially the girl.”

Garcia reposted a message about the attack on her Facebook page, saying, “Reed was unleashed to prey on the innocent citizen and set fire to a 26 year old woman on the CTA. Judges must be held accountable!”

In a filing this week in Reed’s assault case in Cook County court, the pretrial services unit of the Cook County chief judge’s office reported that Reed had repeatedly violated his curfew before the Blue Line attack Monday.Those violations occurred Nov. 9, Nov. 12, Nov. 14, Nov. 15 and at 9:13 a.m. Monday — the day of the CTA attack.

Two “escalated alerts” were issued because of his curfew violation Monday — at 12:13 p.m. and 12 hours later.

The attack on the train happened around 9:30 p.m. Monday.

There’s nothing in Reed’s court records to show that his pretrial case officer notified the judge about his curfew violations until the report was filed Wednesday — two days after the woman was set on fire.

A spokesperson for the Cook County chief judge’s office, which operates the electronic monitoring program, wouldn’t comment.

Earlier this year, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart turned over supervision of people released on home detention while awaiting trial to Chief Cook County Judge Timothy Evans.

A source in Evans’ office said pretrial officers don’t provide the same level of supervision as Dart’s office did.

“We do not have any safeguards to verify addresses,” the source told the Sun-Times. “Sheriffs used to contact people, go there, do a search. We don’t do that. We take the word of the defendant or anyone else who provides us an address. They could give us a bogus address, and we would not know.”

Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke in 2024.

In April, after Dart transferred his electronic monitoring program to Evans, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke warned her staff that pretrial detainees could end up going unchecked. She said pretrial officers in Evans’ office aren’t law enforcement officers and “cannot investigate, seek escape charges or obtain an arrest warrant if a person absconds.”

Appearing in federal court Friday in the terrorism case over the CTA attack, Reed wore a yellow jumpsuit and looked on during the detention hearing.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Aaron Bond showed images of the attack from surveillance footage to U.S. Magistrate Judge Laura McNally, who ordered Reed into custody.

Bond said the victim “did not see or know” the attack was coming. He called it “horrific and depraved” and said Reed has “been given chance after chance after chance in state court over the years.

“In exchange for these numerous second chances, [Reed has] consistently re-offended and grown more serious in the types of offenses he commits,” Bond said.

In a court filing, federal prosecutors said Reed was “leniently treated in state court, including receiving probationary sentences for violent offenses and pretrial release for a victim-involved crime. In exchange for such lenient treatment, defendant has consistently re-offended and delved further into criminality.”

Earlier this year, in an investigation headlined “Failure to treat, failure to protect,” the Sun-Times examined a series of unprovoked attacks downtown and apparent failures by the courts and the mental health system to deal with men who cycled in and out of the system without getting the treatment they needed and went on to kill or commit other violent acts.

Reed told the judge Friday that he needs to be behind bars.

“I’m a target from society,” Reed said. “And I don’t feel safe out there. So I think, for my safety, it’s best for me to be detained.”

He also told the judge to make sure he is fed: “If I don’t eat, then I don’t think we’re going to make trial because I’m going to deteriorate.”