Chicago Train Burning Shows How Too Much Leniency to the Guilty Is Cruelty to the Innocent

Jarrett Stepman-Commentary : Nov 26, 2025
The Daily Signal

Just like in the recent case of the murder of Iryna Zarutska, a woman who was stabbed to death on a Charlotte train, the suspected Chicago arsonist has a rap sheet almost hard to believe.

[DailySignal.com] A young woman is fighting for her life in Chicago with severe burns because of a grave injustice intolerably common in cities across America. (Screengrab image: via ABC 7 Chicago)

Bethany MaGee, a 26-year-old woman from Upland, Indiana, is fighting for her life with horrific burns she received while riding Chicago's CTA Blue Line train on Nov. 17. Her story is incredibly similar to several other incidents as of late that have grabbed national headlines.

Lawrence Reed, a 50-year-old man with an astoundingly long criminal record, allegedly doused MaGee with gasoline, chased her through the train, and lit her on fire. He reportedly yelled out, "Burn alive b—."

The incident was remarkably similar to one that took place on the New York subway a year ago. In that case the alleged assailant was an illegal alien.

Just like in the recent case of the murder of Iryna Zarutska, a woman who was stabbed to death on a Charlotte train, the suspected Chicago arsonist has a rap sheet almost hard to believe.

According to the New York Post, Reed had been arrested 72 times in just Cook County, Illinois. He's been convicted in 15 of those cases.

"One of those busts included an aggravated arson charge, in which he was accused of dousing the city's Thompson Center government building with liquid and setting it on fire just as Gov. JB Pritzker was due to speak at a press conference," police said, according to the Post.

Remarkably, Reed didn't serve any jail time and "was only given probation despite being convicted of the arson incident in April 2020."

Prosecutors wanted to keep Reed locked up, the report noted, but the judge in the case let him go.

This only highlights the reality that the United States has less a crime problem and more a repeat offender problem. The problem is with a justice system, particularly in cities and counties governed by Democrats, that's not at all just.

Leftist Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, he of the worst approval ratings in the whole country, tried to suggest that the train attack was an "isolated incident."

Think about that for a moment. That a career criminal with over 70 arrests, including at least one for arson, committed another crime is the very definition of a pattern.

Johnson is exactly the kind of reckless ideologue who just doesn't get it when it comes to crime. And has no interest in getting it.

"We cannot incarcerate our way out of violence," he said back in August. " ... [Incarceration] is racist. It is immoral. It is unholy."

Yes, we certainly can arrest our way out of violence.

As Manhattan Institute crime expert Rafael Mangual said at a recent House hearing, the critical issue the American justice system faces is the problem of repeat offenders.

The reason so many career criminals roam the streets while occasionally making national headlines is because, he said, "somewhere down the line, policymakers made a choice. They made a choice to pursue decarceration for its own sake because they were convinced that doing so was the best way to serve justice."

This problem can in part be solved by hiring more police, letting them proactively target crime hotspots, or even by applying a force-multiplying increase in law enforcement by calling out the National Guard as President Donald Trump has done in the District of Columbia and elsewhere.

But the problem won't really be resolved until we get the justice side of law and order correct. Even as crime, or maybe just the local reporting on crime technically goes down years after the post-George Floyd riot explosion, many cities will still have intolerable incidents like the one on the Chicago train.

When it comes to the public response to crime, we are getting a hard lesson once given by Adam Smith that an excess of mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

Jarrett Stepman is a columnist for The Daily Signal. He is also the author of "The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America's Past."