The man being questioned by Chicago police, suspected of setting a woman on fire as they rode a Blue Line train in the Loop on Monday night, was walking the streets only because a Cook County judge refused to keep him in jail after he allegedly knocked a social worker unconscious at a west suburban psychiatric hospital, court records show.
Rather than detaining the man, who was deemed too dangerous for a psych ward, the judge rejected prosecutors’ requests in August to keep him safely locked in jail. Instead, she sent him home on an ankle monitor. And while clerk of court entries indicate he was on “24/7” electronic monitoring, paperwork shows the judge actually allowed him to leave his home from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays.
CWBChicago is not naming the 50-year-old suspect or the judge who refused to detain him because he has not been charged with Monday’s attack aboard a train near Clark-Lake…