Chicago Man Accused of Setting Woman on Fire Had Been Arrested 72 Times, And Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Response Was Mind-Boggling

The lunatic caught on camera setting a woman on fire on a Chicago commuter line on Monday will be kept behind bars — finally — until he faces trial in the case, a judge ruled on Friday.

It was a brief — all too late — moment of sanity in the case of 50-year-old Lawrence Reed, a man whose record of at least 72 arrests represents a revolting disgrace of a criminal justice system in a deep-blue city.

Meanwhile, the lunatic placed in the mayor’s office by the city’s deranged Democratic voters only disgraced himself even further.

NEW: The Chicago man accused of lighting a young woman on fire on a Blue Line train had previously been arrested at least 72 times.

72 times…

50-year-old Lawrence Reed is accused of intentionally lighting the woman on fire with gasoline and a lighter.

Judge Laura McNally… pic.twitter.com/kqVm8K3x7L

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) November 21, 2025

Reed’s crime was a stomach-turning echo of the fatal stabbing in Charlotte, North Carolina, this August, in which a young woman — a Ukrainian refugee from the war in her home country — was slaughtered on a commuter train, allegedly by a madman with a lengthy criminal history.

In the Chicago case, Reed is facing federal terrorism charges after being recorded pouring gasoline over a woman on a Chicago public transit train, then chasing her around the car until he set her on fire. The attack occurred about 9:30 p.m., according to Fox News.

Initial reports had his rap sheet at only 49 arrests. The record has only gotten worse since more became publicly known.

In a normal society, the idea of a woman being criminally burned alive would be appalling. Elected officials would express justified outrage and vow that justice will be pursued.

In a Chicago governed by the Democratic Party of the 21st century, Mayor Brandon Johnson doesn’t behave like a normal person.

“This is an isolated incident,” Johnson told reporters on Thursday. “I mean, I don’t see this as some sort of trend.”

Well, that should be enough for anybody — even Reed’s 26-year-old victim and her family. After all, an “isolated incident” can happen anywhere, right?

To be fair, Johnson, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, also called the crime “an absolute failure of our criminal justice system as well as our mental health institutions.”

“This individual was charged with dozens of felonies over the past three decades. He was clearly seriously mentally disturbed and was a danger to himself and to others. The system that we had failed to intervene,” Johnson said, according to the newspaper.

“This is a horrific tragedy that should have never happened.”

That’s all well and good, but it sounds awfully boilerplate coming from the same man who claimed that the attack was an “isolated incident.”

And while it’s obvious the crime “should have never happened,” the point is that it did happen. And it happened in Democratic-run Chicago.

And the Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutzka was murdered in Democratic-run Charlotte.

And a homeless woman burned to death after she was set on fire by an illegal immigrant last December in Democratic-run New York City.

And the list of horrors goes on and on…. and they all seem to have something in common that begins with a “D.”

Maybe it’s really true that Brandon Johnson doesn’t see any kind of “trend” of disturbing crime developing inside Chicago city limits (though Johnson’s judgment on his crime-ridden city is clearly skewed).

If he took the trouble, though, to zoom out a little like the American public can, he might see a “trend” of vicious acts of violence committed against innocent human beings by brazen criminals who should either be behind bars or not in the United States at all.

He might also see that those crimes overwhelmingly take place in Democratic-run jurisdictions or, like the February 2024 murder of nursing student Laken Riley, can be traced directly to the open borders policy of then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat from way back.

But Johnson obviously doesn’t want to see any of that, because it would be proof that his party has abandoned the cause of innocent Americans and the rule of law in favor of career criminals (one of them was named George Floyd).

A man like Reed wouldn’t be walking the streets in a Chicago that cared about the law.

In fact, at the time of Monday’s fire attack, he was on supervised release after being charged with attacking a social worker in a hospital psychiatric wing in August, according to CWB Chicago, an independent news outlet.

Prosecutors had asked that Reed be locked up pending trial in that incident, CWB Chicago reported, but the judge in the case, Cook County Judge Teresa Molina-Gonzalez, decided Reed could safely be freed with an ankle monitor instead.

When prosecutors objected, according to CWB Chicago, Molina-Gonzalez replied: “I understand your position, but I can’t keep everybody in jail because the State’s Attorney wants me to, but I understand and respect your position.”

If she had understood and respected that position better, a 26-year-old woman might not have been set on fire on the Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line on Monday night.

Molina-Gonzalez is a Democrat, by the way.

Even Brandon Johnson should be able to see a trend there.

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