Four people were shot dead on Monday on a commuter train in Chicago, in the northern United States, local police announced, reporting the arrest of a suspect.
Police, alerted by a call to emergency services very early on the start of the US holiday, said they discovered the four victims at the Forest Park station, the terminus of the Blue Line.
Three were declared dead when emergency services arrived and a fourth died in hospital.
“The victims were all passengers on that train,” Forest Park Deputy Police Chief Christopher Chin said at a news conference.
A suspect was identified through video surveillance and arrested in the morning, he added. “A weapon was found,” he stressed.
The United States has a firearm mortality rate that is out of all proportion to that of other developed countries. The phenomenon is explained by the proliferation of individual weapons: one in three adults owns at least one weapon and nearly one in two American adults lives in a home where there is a weapon.
In June, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared gun violence a “public health crisis,” noting that it had become the leading cause of death among American children and adolescents since 2020, ahead of car accidents.
