A man accused of sexually abusing a woman inside a CTA elevator at the Jackson Red Line station was arrested within hours after a transit supervisor recognized him from police bulletins, authorities said. Kurtis Porter, 29, is charged with criminal sexual abuse by force and aggravated battery of a transit passenger following the January 27 assault in the Loop.
Porter allegedly followed a 29-year-old woman onto an elevator at the Jackson station, 220 South State Street, at approximately 5:40 p.m. on Tuesday. CTA security camera footage shows Porter obstructing the surveillance camera upon entering the elevator, police said.
The victim told police that Porter exposed himself, sexually abused her, and grabbed her face during the attack.
CPD and CTA quickly distributed an internal bulletin that included images of Porter, police said. A CTA supervisor working at the Roosevelt CTA station recognized Porter hours later and notified nearby patrol officers.
Judge Shauna Boliker ordered Porter detained on Friday.
CPD records show Porter has been arrested 14 other times since becoming an adult in 2014, mostly for misdemeanors, but court files show nearly all of those charges were dropped. The only exceptions were a 2019 domestic battery case that ended with court supervision he did not complete satisfactorily and two trespassing charges at the same Old Town building that resulted in a 14-day sentence in November.
The Red Line attack marks the second high-profile sex crime at the Jackson station since December.
On December 11, Rasheed Griffin sexually assaulted a 33-year-old woman who uses a wheelchair on an inbound Red Line train and inside an elevator at the Jackson station, prosecutors said. Griffin allegedly boarded the woman’s train car near Belmont around 2:45 a.m., wrapped his legs around her wheelchair, and began kissing and groping her while saying he wanted to perform sexual acts.
CTA surveillance video allegedly showed Griffin wheeling the victim off the train at Jackson and pushing her onto an elevator, prosecutors said. The woman later told officers she could feel Griffin pleasuring himself behind her inside the elevator.
Prosecutors allege Griffin then wheeled her off the elevator, knocked the wheelchair over, and sexually assaulted the woman as she lay on the ground struggling to breathe. The victim screamed that she was being raped, drawing the attention of a CTA customer service agent who summoned a security guard. The guard photographed Griffin as he fled and sent the image to other security officers and CPD. Officers arrested Griffin shortly after at the State and Lake Red Line station.
Judge James Costello ordered Griffin detained on charges of aggravated criminal sexual assault of a handicapped person, aggravated battery in a public place, and aggravated battery of a handicapped person. He remains detained.
The arrest was Griffin’s sixth in Chicago during 2025 and his third arrest in six weeks, according to police records.
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