A 30-year-old Chicago man has been charged with murder in the deaths of four passengers who were fatally shot on Monday as they slept on an L train in the suburb of Forest Park, Ill., the authorities said on Tuesday.
The man, identified by the police as Rhanni S. Davis, faces four counts of first-degree murder, said Deputy Chief Christopher Chin of the Forest Park Police Department.
“This wasn’t a robbery. It didn’t appear that he was in a fight with anybody else,” Mr. Chin said in an interview on Tuesday. “This was a random act of violence. He shot and killed four victims when literally they were sleeping on the train.”
The shooting occurred just before 5:30 a.m. on Monday, aboard a westbound Chicago Transit Authority Blue Line train. According to Mr. Chin, surveillance video showed the assailant walking through the train, shooting four passengers who were asleep in two different train cars.
The four victims, three men and one woman, were not sitting together. Another man who appeared to be a witness fled the train, and the police are searching for him, Mr. Chin said.
The Blue Line train, which runs between Forest Park and Chicago O’Hare International Airport through downtown Chicago, operates 24 hours a day. The C.T.A., the nation’s second-largest public transportation system, serves hundreds of thousands of riders most weekdays.
Three of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene. A fourth was pronounced dead after being rushed to a hospital.
The police used video surveillance to track down Mr. Davis, they said, and he was arrested by the Chicago police on Monday morning on a Pink Line train. A handgun was recovered during the arrest, they said.
Dorval R. Carter Jr., the president of the C.T.A., called the incident “the definition of a heinous crime and tragedy.”
“As soon as this matter was reported, C.T.A. immediately deployed resources to assist the Forest Park police in their investigation into the matter, including review of all possible security camera footage, which proved to be vital in aiding local enforcement,” he said in a statement.
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