The rampage that ended in three men and a woman shot to death on the Blue Line early Monday began in the last row of a car as the train neared the Forest Park station.
Standing by an unoccupied conductor’s booth, Rhanni Davis aimed at a sleeping 52-year-old man and shot him once in the head and once in the torso, prosecutors said during a detention hearing on Wednesday.
Davis allegedly then turned to Simeon Bihesi, 28, also asleep, and shot him twice before walking to the middle of the car where Margaret Johnson, 64, was sitting. Davis “put the gun to victim Johnson’s head and shot her one time in the back of her head,” Assistant State’s Attorney Eugene Wood said.
Davis crossed into another train car and shot Adrian Collins, 60, as he tried to defend himself by raising his hand, prosecutors said.
Six shots were fired in all.
Davis then got off the train at Harlem Avenue, one stop before the end of the line in Forest Park, and boarded a Blue Line train in the opposite direction, prosecutors said.
Around 5:30 a.m., a CTA employee doing routine cleaning at the Forest Park station inadvertently swept a bullet casing from the entrance of one the cars onto the platform. He looked inside and saw the bodies of the first three killed, sitting in the car.
Within an hour and a half, surveillance photos of Davis were sent out, and a CTA worker on the Pink Line reported seeing Davis at the California stop. Davis was arrested without incident, still carrying a bag containing a Glock handgun that was used in the shootings, authorities said.
On Wednesday, Davis was led into the small courtroom in the basement of the Maywood Courthouse by a phalanx of sheriff’s deputies, hands and feet shackled and wearing a tan Department of Corrections jumpsuit. Davis appeared surprised by the number of people packed into the small courtroom, most of them media and courthouse employees and some relatives of victims.
The identity of the fourth victim, the 52-year-old man, has not been released because his family has not been notified.
Despite the new details of how the killings unfolded, what motivated the deadly attack was made no clearer during the hearing.
CTA surveillance video first shows Davis getting on a Red Line train around 3:50 a.m. Monday before switching to the Blue Line train 40 minutes later. Prosecutors said nothing about any interaction between Davis and the victims before the shooting.
Prosecutors noted that Davis’ hands tested positive for gunshot residue, and the 9mm Glock handgun found in the satchel matched shell casings found on the scene.
Judge Elizabeth Ciaccia-Lezza ordered Davis held in custody pending trial on four counts of first-degree murder. She cited the apparent unprovoked and random nature of the attack as the definition of dangerous.
An assistant public defender said Davis holds a state firearm owners identification card and most recently worked at a Taco Bell but has also had training and experience in security.
Davis has been charged in at least six criminal cases in Cook County since November 2012 using various names and a variety of addresses, plus one in Nashville, Tennessee. Davis has faced misdemeanor gun charges in two cases that were ultimately dismissed, court records show.
At a news conference after the hearing, Wood said victim relatives who attended the hearing were “quite devastated, understandably so.”
Bihesi, the youngest victim, had been unhoused since moving to Chicago a month earlier, his father told the Sun-Times.
Bihesi “was a good child,” said Leonard Nyamusevya, who lives in Ohio where Bihesi was raised. “The only thing I know: My son would not hurt anybody. He was very peaceful, and for some reason, some bad thing happened to him.”