Chicago Man Charged in Fatal Shootings of Four Sleeping Train Passengers

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.”

On Tuesday evening, Kim Foxx, the top prosecutor in Cook County, which includes Chicago and Forest Park, decried the shooting as “inexplicable” as she announced charges in the case.

“It is horrific,” she said. “We want answers.”

Mr. Davis is expected to appear in court on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer.

The shooting occurred just before 5:30 a.m. on Monday, aboard a westbound Chicago Transit Authority Blue Line train. According to police, surveillance video showed the assailant walking through the train, shooting four passengers who appeared to be 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. Officials said on Tuesday that six shell casings from a Glock handgun were found at the scene.

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.”

Addressing violent crime on the C.T.A. is a very complex issue, he said, noting that the system has 145 rail stations, 1,500 rail cars and covers almost 240 miles of track.

But in his long career in mass transit, he said, “I can’t recall any kind of mass killing like this ever occurring.”