In the dim, rattling confines of America’s urban underbelly, where commuters seek solace in the hum of steel wheels, unimaginable horrors continue to unfold. Just weeks after the world mourned the senseless stabbing of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska on a North Carolina light rail, a chilling parallel has erupted in Chicago: 26-year-old Bethany MaGee, a promising business analyst, was doused in gasoline and set ablaze on a Blue Line train, her body ravaged by 60% burns. As MaGee fights for life in a critical care unit, her survival—barely—casts a haunting “what if” over Zarutska’s untimely death, igniting furious debates on transit safety, recidivist crime, and the fraying social safety nets that allow predators to prowl free.

The attack on MaGee unfolded with premeditated cruelty on November 17, 2025, around 9:30 p.m. Surveillance footage captures the ordinary evening commute turning infernal: Lawrence Reed, a 50-year-old drifter with a rap sheet spanning 72 arrests and 53 cases—including violent felonies—boarded the train near Clark/Lake station clutching a plastic bottle of gasoline he’d purchased just 20 minutes earlier at a nearby station. MaGee, a Purdue graduate from Upland, Indiana, sat absorbed in her phone, her back turned to the menace.

Without warning or words, Reed poured the accelerant over her, flicked a lighter, and ignited the flames. Screams pierced the air as fire licked her clothes and skin; she bolted to the car’s rear, collapsing on the platform in agony. Bystanders and first responders rushed her to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where surgeons battled to save her left arm and hand—the epicenter of her third-degree burns. Today, she endures excruciating treatments, her family—parents Emily and Dr. Gregory MaGee, brothers Mark and John—clustered in vigil, pleading for prayers amid a storm of medical bills and emotional wreckage.

This barbarity echoes the August 22, 2025, slaying of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska in Charlotte, North Carolina, with eerie precision. Zarutska, a vibrant artist and pizzeria worker who fled Ukraine’s Russian invasion in 2022 with her mother and siblings, had carved a hopeful new life in the U.S. Enrolled in college, learning English, and dreaming of stability, she boarded the Lynx Blue Line at Scaleybark station after a late shift. Four minutes later, Decarlos Brown Jr., a 34-year-old homeless ex-convict with multiple priors for assault and theft, plunged a pocketknife into her back and neck three times—from behind, unprovoked, as she sat unaware.

Surveillance captured the brutality in cold clarity: Zarutska slumped lifeless, her blood staining the seats. Brown, charged with first-degree murder and federal terrorism counts that could invoke the death penalty, fled briefly before capture. Her death sparked global outrage, tributes from rappers like DaBaby to newly named butterfly species in her honor, and scathing indictments of lax fare enforcement and mental health failures.

Both cases expose a rotting core in U.S. public transit: repeat offenders unleashed by “soft-on-crime” policies. Reed, freed on bond despite prosecutors’ dire warnings in his last trial, embodies the peril; a judge’s leniency allowed his rampage. Zarutska’s killer, too, slipped through cracks in Charlotte’s system. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy decried Chicago’s “carelessness,” thundering on social media: “No one should fear for their lives on the subway.” Experts echo this, citing over 1,200 violent transit incidents nationwide in 2025 alone—a 30% surge from pre-pandemic levels—fueled by urban decay, underfunded security, and ideological bail reforms that prioritize release over public peril.

MaGee’s improbable escape—fueled by her instincts and strangers’ heroism—spares her Zarutska’s fate, but at what cost? As she whispers through pain of her love for animals, church Sundays, and family barbecues, one can’t help but ponder: Had bystanders intervened sooner on that Charlotte train, or cameras alerted transit cops faster, might Iryna Zarutska be alive today, sketching dreams in NoDa? These twin tragedies demand reckoning: fortified patrols, AI-monitored platforms, mandatory mental health screenings for repeat arrestees. For now, two women’s stories—one silenced, one scarred—scream for justice, reminding us that in America’s transit veins, safety is no longer a given. Until reforms ignite, the next spark could claim another innocent soul.