Four passengers shot dead on Chicago commuter train, suspect arrested

Four people were shot dead on a commuter train in Chicago, in the north of the United States, local police announced on Monday, September 2. A suspect has been arrested.

Police, alerted by a call to emergency services early on the start of a public holiday in the United States, said they found the four victims at the Forest Park station, the terminus of the Blue Line. Three were pronounced dead when emergency services arrived and a fourth died at the hospital.

“The victims were all passengers on that train”Forest Park Police Deputy Chief said at a news conference. A suspect was identified through video surveillance and arrested this morning, and “a weapon was found”he stressed.

The United States has a firearm mortality rate that is out of all proportion to other developed countries. The phenomenon is explained by the proliferation of individual weapons, with one in three adults owning at least one weapon and nearly one in two American adults living in a home with a weapon. In June, the US Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, declared gun violence a “public health crisis”, noting in particular that since 2020 it had become the leading cause of death among American children and adolescents, ahead of road accidents.