Kass: Judge releases violent felon who burns a woman alive on the CTA?

Kass is hitting on all cylinders this morning. Why Chicago residents keep electing this kind of garbage to run City Hall, and the Cook County Board is beyond me. As for some of the bad apples taking up space in our judiciary, I hope our new Chief Judge Charles Beach can clean things up. He replaces Tim Evans, a well intentioned but bumbling leader of our judiciary.

How a City Dies: Woman Burned Alive on CTA by a Violent Career Criminal Who Was Enabled by Democrat Judges

By John Kass | Nov. 23, 2025

How does a great city die?

Not by the screams of a man torn apart by demons as in Michelangelo’s “Torment of St. Anthony.”

A great city like Chicago dies with silent shrugs and quiet sighs, and the soft mewling of progressive politicians.

In Chicago, the great city shaped by Mayor Richard J. Daley and his son, Mayor Richard M. Daley there is a new order. It is not the law-and-order city. Instead, the liberal politically correct Democrats who have followed the Daleys now refuse to punish repeat violent lawbreakers. The Democrats have become George Soros Social Justice Warriors. They shrink the size of the jail population, and congratulate themselves by refusing to punish violent lawlessness, enabling and promoting social justice judges, while releasing violent predators, all the while playing race politics to isolate the good and the lawful, and so guarantee a surplus of lawlessness and anarchy.

These are the hideous progressive sounds of Chicago political corruption: The jails are opened as the Cook County Democrats congratulate themselves, and violent criminal offenders are released from custody so they can attack the law abiding, again and again and again.

And there is another sound that defines it.

“Burn alive B****!”

That is what a career violent predator with more than 50 arrests–at least 10 of them for violent felonies–is alleged to have shouted the other night in Chicago after dousing a female Chicago Transit Authority with gasoline on the Blue Line CTA train and setting her on fire. She is reportedly in critical condition.

And this comes as a violent riot among hundreds of teenager broke out in downtown Chicago at a celebration of the Christmas shopping season, with at least 14 people shot. One dead. Merry Christmas, Chicago.

“Burn alive b****!” is what the CTA fire attacker—repeat violent felon Lawrence Reed who has been arrested at least 50 times–is alleged to have yelled as he was arrested on Tuesday. He’s been federally charged with committing a “terror act or other violence” on mass transit

Lawrence Reed, 50, was out on pre-trial release for allegedly knocking a psychiatric ward social worker unconscious in August, is federally charged with a terrorist attack or other violence against a mass transportation system. Before he was released, he had been before Cook County Judge Theresa Molina Gonzales. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s office warned Judge Theresa Molina-Gonzales to keep him locked up or he would likely hurt others.

Judge Theresa Molina Gonzales refused. She had him released from jail and put on electronic monitoring. And she said something that comes out of the progressive hall of fame:

“I can’t keep everybody in jail because the State’s Attorney wants me to.”

Really? Is justice about dispensing favors and whining?

I keep mentioning the judge’s name, Cook County Judge Theresa Molina Gonzales so you’ll remember it. Those 13 words should be carved into memory.

This is a horrible story. Jeff Carlin and I touched on it during the Chicago Way podcast. For reporting on this, I’ve been relying on CWB Chicago on Chicago City Wire.com and not the Chicago newspapers.

Why? I can’t trust the Chicago papers to report facts that would threaten the hard leftists who run the Democrat Party. The leftists took control of the papers years ago as I left the business and let George Soros control the prosecutor’s office without a peep of outrage. And the electronic media is just about mewling happy sounds. There is no substance save for Dan Proft.

The damage to the criminal justice system is incalculable as the pain felt by that woman and her loved ones as she was burned by a violent repeat offender on public transportation.

Democrats are concerned, but they’re not publicly outraged. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is to blame for this. But she won’t say a thing because she’ll seek protection. But she’s the boss, the picker of judges who emptied out the Cook County Jail and bragged about how she saved money via “decarceration,” as the jail population was shrunk and madmen like Lawrence Reed were allowed out to attack the most vulnerable.

For example, ChicagoCityWire.com ran a story that exposed Ralph Meczyk, Cook County judge who let CTA “burn bitch” attacker free, is himself a convicted felon

“Cook County Judge Ralph E. Meczyk, the judge who issued a September order allowing CTA “burn bitch” attacker Lawrence Reed, previously arrested 49 times, to leave his home, is himself a convicted felon who served federal prison time in the 1980s.

“Meczyk, appointed to the Cook County bench last year, pled guilty to income tax fraud– cashing bond refund checks sent out by the Cook County Circuit Clerk’s office, but not reporting the income– in 1987.

“Meczyk, then age 36, and his law partner admitted they collected $35,800– $141,000 in today’s dollars– but paid no tax on it.”

Meczyk was pardoned by former President Bill Clinton.

But who made him a judge? The Democrats.

Brandon Johnson, the paranoid mayor and servant of Boss Toni, who constantly issues racial screeds about “black and brown,” said it was an isolated incident. Johnson offered up the usual Marxist gobbledygook

“The level of accountability that has to happen in this moment, I trust that the federal level will do its part,” Johnson said. “All I can say is that as awful and as horrific as this tragedy is, this is an isolated incident. As we continue to invest more in our public transportation system, we want people to feel safe as they ride.”

No one feels safe as they ride the CTA. Not even if they had a shotgun in their lap. This one belongs to Boss Toni and the Cook County judges—Democrats who allowed this to happen—who are wearing the jacket on this.

The only judgemaker not mentioned in the stories about the woman burning on the CTA is Cook County Boss Toni Preckwinkle.

.

Democrats don’t want to talk about the fact that Democrat politics gives credit for judges who won’t enforce the law. They don’t want to jail repeat violent offenders if they are black or brown. It’s ugly and racial, but it’s true. The people of Cook County feel the truth of this. And it is at the center of so many tragedies of repeat violent offenders destroying the lives of tax payers, most of them poor, most of them also minorities.

And it is at the center of the politics of Preckwinkle’s protector, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and his infamous Safety Act which has done away with cash bail. The newspapers are progressive now, and congratulate their progressive politicians. And the people who are burned or those broken by thugs for money? They don’t provide utility to the political or journalistic class. They are summarily ignored.

In April 2020, Reed poured gasoline along the north end of the Thompson Center and set it ablaze because he had not received his Social Security (SSI) check, prosecutors said at the time. He started the fire as Gov. JB Pritzker was preparing to hold his daily COVID-19 press conference inside the building, but there was no indication that Pritzker was targeted or that Reed knew the governor was present.

That fire was caught on camera by a passerby:

Reed ultimately pleaded guilty to arson and received two years of “mental health probation” from Judge Arthur Hill.

Hill has since retired. But Mecyk and Theresa Molina-Gonzales are still around. And Pritzker is vulnerable here, as is Boss Preckwinkle.

But will the Chicago media make a case, and connect the dots to Pritzker and Preckwinkle? No.

.A while back on The Chicago Way podcast, the great writer Heather Mac Donald, author of “The War on Cops” was our guest. I’ve linked to the podcast. I do hope you’ll listen to her entire interview. She’s clear headed about crime and the politics of crime policy, and the costs.

Mac Donald is fearlessly brilliant.

“People don’t want to put up with the violence,” Mac Donald said. “People who can move, will, because you don’t have to put up with this anarchy,” she said.

But she does offer a solution to Chicago and other towns.

“We know how to fix this,” she says. “You enforce the law. It will work.”

Pritzker and Preckwinkle understand. But they don’t want to fix it. They don’t want to risk enforcing the law. And since Illinois is a blue state they don’t have to enforce the law. They don’t want to risk angering black and brown voters who statistically commit most of the violent crime. The political class of Democrats won’t putting black and brown men in prison, even though those same black and brown youths have been failed by the broken public schools and the Chicago Teacher’s Union again and again, until the only thing they can do is go on welfare or rob someone.

That young woman burned on the CTA by the madman who was enabled by Preckwinkle, Soros, and Cook County judges is in critical condition.

You might think of her as you sit down for your Thanksgiving Day dinner and hug your loved ones as the great city of Chicago city dies, tormented by the leftists.

I think of what the great law-and-order Mayor Richard J. Daley would say, looking down on his beloved city as the young woman clings to life in the burn unit of Cook County Hospital.

“What the hell is going on town there?”