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'All-Day' CTA Rider Arrested After Two Failed Attempts at Theft, Police Say

By Mark Schipper | May 24, 2015 3:01pm | Updated on May 26, 2015 8:46am
 A man known to CTA personnel as an all-day rider was arrested after attempting to rob two passengers.
A man known to CTA personnel as an all-day rider was arrested after attempting to rob two passengers.
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DNAinfo/Tanveer Ali

ROGERS PARK — A man who was told to stay off CTA trains because of numerous prior incidents was arrested May 12 on a Red Line car after trying to rob two passengers while using a crutch as a diversion.

Officers arrested Rasheed Smith, 34, of the 300 block of East 90th Street, around 8:30 a.m. on the Morse station platform, police said. Two riders came forward to say he’d tried to grab electronics out of their hands while the train was rolling. Smith was charged with misdemeanor criminal trespassing and misdemeanor attempted theft, police said.

Peter Fasoranti, a CTA supervisor who went to the platform and kept Smith there until police arrived, said Smith had “numerous” prior incidents on the Red Line and was ordered to stay off of "L" trains completely.

“He’s what we call a 10-11,” said Fasoranti. “These guys just ride the trains all day, every day. You order them off but they come right back anyway.”

These all-day vagabonds are not often violent, but they regularly do bother passengers and refuse to get off trains, even at the end of a line when the trains empty out to be sent through switching yards and undergo regular procedures, Fasoranti said.

That morning, the conductor had been forced to stop the train once between the Howard and Morse stations when a man hit the emergency button after Smith tried to rob him, according to Ebony Francellno, one of Smith’s targets. But when the motorwoman entered the car, Smith wasn’t doing anything, so the train continued to Morse where CTA personnel were waiting. 

Smith had limped his way to another carriage by the time the train slid in at Morse, according to the victims. Francellno, 21, and James Montgomery, 43, the second victim, met CTA personnel there and made a report with Chicago Police about what had happened. 

Francellno, who rides the train every day to cosmetology school, told DNAinfo Chicago she instinctually walked away from Smith after he boarded and stood next to her. But he followed her through one car and into another, she said.

“He just looked really weird,” said Francellno. “I knew something was wrong right away, I just felt it.”

In the next car, Smith struck her leg with his crutch, either accidentally or on purpose, and made a swipe for her iPhone, Francellno said. She pulled it away and Smith continued on down the carriage. Neither exchanged a word with the other at any time, she said.

“Police told me he uses that crutch to bump into people and knock them away or distract them so he can grab their stuff,” said Francellno, who was not hurt by the strike. 

Not far behind her was Montgomery, who said Smith took three steps toward him and made a swiping grab at his MP3 player.

Montgomery told DNAinfo Chicago he’d seen Smith try to grab the girl’s phone and was watching him.

“I was scared,” said Montgomery. “He was scary. I just pulled the thing away from him. He never touched it.”

Both victims said they ride CTA trains every day and neither ever had a problem before that morning. Francellno and Montgomery both said they wouldn't be scared off riding the "L" again.

“I’m just a train rider, period,"  Francellno said. "I ride the Green Line to the West Side, the Red Line all the way to 95th, I’ve never had this problem. On the next few days I was kind of nervous, it just kind of made me feel weird, but I’m fine.”

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