A 59-year-old River Forest man walked from his home to the Harlem Avenue L stop on the morning of Dec. 1 to take the train to Rush University Medical Center, where he volunteered when not working his regular job as a grocery clerk at Jewel.
Intellectually disabled, living independently and described as a “good, generous human being,” the man relied on the CTA to get around the Chicago area because he didn’t drive.
But what should’ve been a routine trip seven stops east along the Blue Line from Forest Park to the West Side nearly turned fatal for the man, who was shoved off the commuter platform onto the tracks by a suspect with a long rap sheet — who badgered the victim for $1 and apparently got upset when he didn’t get it.
“He fell approximately eight to 10 feet,” said one of the victim’s two sisters, both of whom spoke to the Chicago Sun-Times but asked that neither they nor their brother be publicly named.
Part of the man’s right leg was shattered while his left leg also sustained a fracture, and he landed near the third rail that powers trains and pulses with 600 volts of electricity.
“Had he touched that, it’d be a much different story,” the second sister said. “We’re very grateful that didn’t happen.”
A Sun-Times analysis found the man is far from the only L rider shoved onto train tracks in recent years. More than 60 instances have been recorded in CTA paperwork since 2021 — amounting to one incident a month, on average.
The records don’t show anybody dying from being pushed during that time frame, but there were injuries and lots of close calls — and in past years, there have been fatalities.
In the Harlem Avenue incident, a train was nearby, but the operator luckily saw the victim on the tracks south of the platform and was able to stop an estimated 100 feet short of the fallen man, according to records and interviews. The power was cut off — routine procedure in such emergencies.
CTA records also show:
- On April 27, 2025, a woman at the Red Line’s 63rd Street L stop was sprayed with an “unknown substance” and shoved onto the train tracks while the offender took off running down the Dan Ryan Expressway.
- A week earlier at the Howard Street station that serves as a link between the Purple, Red and Yellow lines, a man dressed in all red began inexplicably “undressing on the platform,” spurring another passenger to kick “the indecently exposed offender, causing him to fall.”
- Amid an apparent “domestic dispute” at the Blue Line’s Kedzie/Homan stop in 2021, a man pushed a woman onto the tracks.
- This past August at the Blue Line’s Pulaski stop, “two youth offenders” were seen “fighting with an older male on the platform in an attempt to rob him,” records show. They “then pushed” him “to track level.”
- At the Blue Line’s Belmont L station in April 2024, a robbery took a different turn, as a man fell onto the tracks “after being punched by a victim that he was trying to rob.”
Most of the incidents appeared intentional, sometimes involving people with apparent mental health issues, sometimes the outcome of another crime, such as a stick-up or a fight, records show.
One exception occurred on Aug. 20, 2024, at the Howard Street stop when a 69-year-old rider was pushed onto the tracks — by a security guard’s dog.
“The passenger walked by the security dog too close and startled it,” CTA records say.
“When the dog jumped up, the security guard lost his balance, causing him to lose his grip on the leash, resulting in the dog pushing the passenger to the right of way.”
A worker “assisted the passenger back to the platform… the passenger declined medical assistance, however he dropped his shoe and cell phone on the right of way.”
The Trump administration has been threatening to withhold federal funding from the CTA if the agency doesn’t come up with a better plan to deal with violence on public transportation.
While President Donald Trump’s often-aggressive policies toward major U.S. cities are sometimes viewed as a cynical means to undercut and destabilize Democratic power centers, safety and security indeed are troublesome on the transit system — which ultimately falls under the oversight of Mayor Brandon Johnson.
The Sun-Times analysis comes not long after the newspaper found aggravated assaults and batteries on the CTA reached a 24-year high in 2025, with those crimes also up so far in 2026 compared to the same period a year earlier.
For decades, the CTA has faced criticism about crime, and the agency has tried to emphasize that in relative terms, the system is safe given how many riders it has. But leaders have at times seemed to prioritize cost-savings over safety — while increasingly relying on security technology that may help catch offenders but can’t intervene when a rider is being mugged or beaten.
In New York City, riders shoved onto tracks in the subway system has been almost epidemic, and that has played into the main transit agency’s decision to start installing barriers on platforms.
“Being pushed in front of a train is among the greatest fears of city dwellers,” The New York Times wrote in February, detailing the ordeal of a man who had been pushed onto the tracks on Dec. 31, 2024, and has sued New York’s main transit agency for “gross negligence” and “reckless conduct.”
Just days ago, two passengers were shoved onto tracks in New York in what was described as an unprovoked attack. One of the victims was in his 80s.
Overseas, train systems in places such as Tokyo also have different kinds of protective barriers on platforms, though they appear to be primarily aimed at preventing accidental falls as well as suicides.
Other findings based on the CTA records of people being pushed onto train tracks show:
- Most incidents happened on the Red and Blue lines, the CTA’s only 24-hour routes, followed by the Green Line.
- Overall, a dozen or so incidents happened in 2025, while a similar number of shoving occurrences were reported in 2024.
- The vast majority of incidents involved male victims and male assailants.
Neither a 2022 incident involving an L motorman shoved onto the tracks at the Red Line’s Granville stop nor another shoving incident on the Blue Line that same year were included in the records released by the CTA, which apparently does not track shoving incidents in a specific crime category — and so doesn’t keep a comprehensive list.
The Dec. 1 incident at the Harlem stop also wasn’t in the records, which the Sun-Times requested under the state’s open records law.
Acting CTA President Nora Leerhsen wouldn’t speak to the Sun-Times, but her office released a statement that said in part:
“Random, unprovoked incidents of people being pushed onto CTA tracks are extremely rare. In fact, the 66 incidents in the data cited occurred during a five-year period where CTA provided more than a half-billion train rides. None of those incidents resulted in death and the vast majority of them were the result of a verbal or physical altercation getting out of hand.”
“That said, CTA takes every incident seriously — and we are always concerned with the impact these incidents have on the people involved, our employees and the thousands of riders affected by service disruptions. That’s why CTA increased the number of law enforcement hours on its system by 75 percent as part of the March 2026 Security Enhancement Plan.”
“CTA has met with the MTA” — New York’s transit agency — “to learn about their physical platform barrier initiatives — stationary fencing in stations. The agency is also evaluating the feasibility of piloting a similar solution at its rail stations based on what its learned from peer agencies.”
The CTA also has been testing technology to better detect people or objects on tracks “and enable swift intervention,” according to the agency, saying the technology involves cameras and artificial intelligence, and fiber optic cables.
“CTA is not relying on any single solution. It is addressing both the technical gaps and the underlying social issues that can lead to these rare but serious incidents.”
According to one of the sisters of the Dec. 1 victim, their brother “was going down the ramp” around 8:30 a.m. when “this person asked him for a dollar, and he said, ‘I don’t have a dollar.’”
The assailant “continued to harass” the victim onto the platform, where he “eventually pushed him off.”
The alleged offender, Tommie O. Carter, was quickly arrested and has been charged with, among other offenses, attempted murder. He is being held in Cook County Jail and declined through the sheriff’s office to comment. He has a lengthy arrest history.
The victim’s sisters say their brother was transported to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood and has undergone two leg surgeries. He is now staying at a physical rehabilitation center where only recently he was able to take some steps with a walker.
The sisters said it would be easy to be consumed by anger over the incident, so they’re trying to stay positive. But it’s clear the suspect “should’ve never been on the street,” one of them said.
The other sister said Carter “needs to sit for a long time and think about what he’s done.”
She said of her brother: “He’s one of the physically and mentally strongest people I know … his spirits continue to be very good … but the big question for us is we don’t know what his new normal is going to be.”