Boy, 16, shot at bus stop in 1 of 3 instances of violence on Chicago's transit system in a day
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Three people were injured trying to take Chicago Transit Authority buses and trains on Tuesday – in the latest among many crimes on the city's transit system.
Among them was a high school student who got shot on a bus.
The 16-year-old boy had no other choice but to take the bus to get home from school – and in doing so, he was shot in the arm. His mother talked with CBS 2 and asked that she remain anonymous.
"All I know was I got a phone call saying that my son was shot," the mother said.
She had just been on the phone with him before he was shot while waiting for a bus at Jackson Boulevard and Damen Avenue on the Near West Side – near Malcolm X College and the Fifth Third Arena Chicago Blackhawks Community Ice Rink.
"Every day, this is our routine; we talk before he comes home," the mother said, "and he had just told me his bus was three minutes away."
The teen did not make it home. Instead, his mom met him at the hospital – where she found his condition had been stabilized. But she said they were both changed mentally – forever.
"Why isn't it that we can't all stick together and save our kids?" she said. "Whether white, Black, yellow, orange, you can't put no color on death, right? You die, you're dead."
The Chicago Transit Authority had no information on the bus stop shooting. A spokeswoman wrote on Thursday: "CTA neither has any reported incidents matching the details provided, nor any requests for medical or emergency responders by CTA personnel in the area."
The woman's son's case was one of three violent crimes CBS 2 has counted relating to the CTA on Tuesday alone.
At the 47th Street Red Line stop along the Dan Ryan Expressway at 8 p.m., a 40-year-old man was on the train when two people started to approach him. He was shot in the leg and survived.
No one was in custody for that shooting as of Wednesday.
Farther south at the 69th Street Red Line stop – also along the Dan Ryan – a 46-year-old man started harassing passengers on the platform and pulled out a knife. A victim tried to intervene, and the man with the knife ended up getting stabbed himself.
Police did not report any arrests in that case either.
"It's getting closer and closer to home," the teenage victim's mother said. "These kids don't have no safety out here."
After all this, CBS 2 asked the mother if he would ever take CTA transportation again. She said no.
"If he's not getting there through me, he's not going," she said.
A resolution questioning the future of CTA President Dorval Carter Jr. was introduced at a City Council meeting Wednesday. Many alders are calling for Carter to resign, and if he does not do so, they are asking Mayor Brandon Johnson to fire him,
But opponents threw up a roadblock, so any possible vote on that resolution faces a delay.
Carter has been president of the CTA since 2015.
