CTA employee charged with battery of passenger who died held on $3 million bond
CHICAGO (CBS) – Prosecutors revealed disturbing new details in court on Tuesday about what CTA cameras caught early Saturday morning when a CTA employee, on the job, allegedly beat a passenger.
The passenger later died and the employee was charged with aggravated battery, but not murder. CBS 2's Sabrina Franza was in court to get the details.
The CTA employee's mother and sister were in the courtroom on Tuesday. The 39-year-old suspect's mother watched her son appear via Zoom. His sister kept her eyes glued to the judge who took a breath before delivering her ruling to keep him in jail on $3 million bond.
The beating lasted over an hour, prosecutors said. It was an unprovoked, prolonged attack on a man walking around the Blue Line's La Salle Street stop with a wheelchair full of his belongings.
At the beginning of the video, around 2 a.m., that man was alive. By 4 a.m., he was pronounced dead.
Police took the employee, Emmett Richardson, into custody a few hours later. Richardson has been a CTA employee for two years. The agency's records revealed he was a customer service representative.
He was on the clock when the attack took place. The state said it started as Richardson kicked the 54-year-old victim's wheelchair and tossed his belongings all over the platform.
The video does not show the victim fighting back as prosecutors said Richardson dragged the man up an escalator and threw him over the railing. Prosecutors said cameras show him drag the victim up 11 stairs and tossed him back down a second time.
Police said the suspect poured water on the victim. Then there was more kicking, more pulling, more pushing. That's when prosecutors said the victim appeared motionless.
Richardson later called 911 to report an unresponsive man that he said he was helping up the stairs. He claimed at that point, he was breathing and had a drug overdose. Police did not find an drug paraphernalia.
The details were so gruesome that Judge Barbara Dawkins said it "shocks the conscience."
The CTA has since removed Richardson from his post. CBS 2 2 was told his manager issued multiple verbal and written warnings about Richardson's customer treatment and work ethic before the beating.
Now he's facing two felony counts, but not a murder charge.
Dawkins left the state with this to consider: "I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to say how he died, but I'm not a medical examiner."
Sources told CBS 2 the charges could be upgraded, pending the Cook County Medical Examiner's assessment. The 54-year-old man's cause of death is still pending.
The county is also still looking to notify his family and so we are withholding his identity.