Nearly two years after a CTA passenger was robbed on the Red Line, a man is facing charges after another of his alleged victims had a chance encounter with him in Lakeview. CWB Chicago readers may remember Curtis Tyler, 34, because he was arrested in 2021 and ultimately convicted of attacking a Red Line passenger with a hammer, a crime police at the time suspected he had committed against other victims as well.
Around 6:45 a.m. on June 27, a 26-year-old man called 911 and reported that a man who had threatened to shoot him on the Red Line a week earlier was walking near the Belmont CTA station in Lakeview. He gave police a description of the suspect’s clothing and waited for CPD to arrive.
Officers found Tyler getting into a car outside a Taco Bell at 920 West Belmont Avenue, matching the description, and asked if they could search him, a CPD report said. Tyler agreed, and police allege they found a gun-shaped cigarette lighter in his jacket pocket. The victim then identified Tyler as the person who had threatened him.
Chicago police coordinated with Skokie police, who had handled the original complaint on June 13. According to that report, the victim said he was riding the Red Line between the Argyle and Howard stops when another passenger, allegedly Tyler, manipulated the slide of a black firearm and made several threats while pointing it at him.
Tyler was charged with two misdemeanors in that case, neither of which is detainable under the SAFE-T Act. But he didn’t go very far. CPD officers arrested him again at the courthouse to face charges in a CTA robbery from 2024.
In that case, a CPD report alleges that a 73-year-old man was on the platform at the Sox-35th station on August 28, 2024, when he got into a verbal altercation with Tyler, who ultimately produced a handgun and punched and robbed the man. Police released surveillance images of the robbery suspect about a week later and asked the public for help identifying him. Judge Rivanda Doss Beal ordered Tyler detained on charges of robbery and aggravated battery of a transit passenger.
Tyler’s arrest report also states he is suspected of robbing another victim at the Argyle Red Line station in September 2024, allegedly taking the victim’s wallet and chain and punching him in the face with the handle of a knife. He has not been charged in that incident.
Chicago police officers found Tyler at the Belmont CTA station in Lakeview a short time later and recognized him as matching the hammer attack suspect’s description. Tyler allegedly told officers he “just got into it with someone on the train.” Police say they found a hammer, a folding knife, and someone else’s Ventra card in his possession.
In July 2022, Tyler received a four-year sentence for attacking a 50-year-old man with a hammer as they prepared to exit a train at the Clark-Division Red Line station on August 24, 2021. Prosecutors said Tyler mumbled as he stood next to the victim on the train, then suddenly struck him in the forehead with the hammer and ran from the station. Prosecutors also alleged Tyler was performing a sex act as he carried out the attack. The victim was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where doctors closed the wound on his head with four staples.
Prosecutors said police were investigating Tyler in connection with at least eleven similar attacks on the city’s trains, buses, and L platforms. But he was never charged in any of those other incidents.
Tyler received a nine-year sentence for choking and robbing a victim at a CTA bus stop in 2012. In that case, he allegedly walked up to the victim, asked him for a cigarette, and then grabbed him by the throat and choked him when he refused, demanding the victim’s belongings before taking his wallet. Tyler was also found guilty of aggravated battery causing great bodily harm in 2014 after attacking another victim at a CTA station. He has ten misdemeanor convictions and a juvenile robbery conviction from 2007.
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