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A young woman named Bethany MaGee was brutally doused in gasoline and set on fire aboard a Chicago Blue Line train on November 17, leaving her with catastrophic burns and fighting for her life in a burn unit. The surveillance footage and initial reports of the attack have shocked Americans who expect to ride public transit without fearing for their safety.
The man accused of this savage attack, 50-year-old Lawrence Reed, is no stranger to crime — prosecutors say his history stretches back decades with scores of arrests, and investigators say he was captured on video buying gasoline before the assault. This wasn’t a one-off danger; the records paint a picture of a recidivist who repeatedly cycled through the criminal justice system without being meaningfully incapacitated.
Even more infuriating is how Reed was walking the streets at all after a violent August incident in which he allegedly knocked a social worker unconscious. Prosecutors warned the court that electronic monitoring would be “wholly insufficient” to protect the public, yet the judge overseeing that case released him on an ankle monitor — a decision now linked directly to this preventable horror.
Records show Reed repeatedly violated his monitoring conditions in the days leading up to the attack, registering multiple alerts and curfew breaches that should have triggered immediate action. Instead, the system that’s supposed to keep dangerous people contained failed at nearly every level, demonstrating the human cost of lax enforcement and bureaucratic excuses.
Federal prosecutors have now charged Reed with terrorism-related offenses in the wake of the attack, and a U.S. magistrate has ordered him detained pending trial — but that justice is cold comfort to a young woman who may never be whole again. The aftermath is predictable: headlines, outrage, and politicians offering thoughts while the policies that enabled this monster remain untouched.
Let’s be clear: this is the cost of the decarceration, pretrial release, and weak-on-crime ideology that has been pushed by modern prosecutors and activist judges. Hardworking Americans are tired of seeing their safety sacrificed to legal theories and empathy for criminals while victims pay the price with their bodies and futures.
If we truly value life and liberty, we must demand accountability from the judges and officials who greenlight releases for repeat offenders, overhaul the broken monitoring systems that failed to flag clear violations, and restore common-sense policies that prioritize public safety over abstract notions of reform. The answer is not hollow sympathy after the fact — it’s real, enforceable consequences that keep dangerous people off our streets.
