Additional alleged details emerge involving CTA Red Line killing
Pictured is 19-year-old Katlar Parchman.
CHICAGO - Prosecutors have described alleged details about the second person facing a murder charge after a man was pushed off a moving CTA Red Line train on Chicago's South Side on Sept. 7.
What led up to the deadly push
What we know:
Kyle Bickham, 29, was riding home from work on the Red Line on Sunday, Sept. 7, when he boarded the train at the 95th Street stop, the same stop where Katlar Parchman, age 19, a 15-year-old girl and two other men also got on.
Surveillance cameras inside the train car captured what followed, and multiple witnesses described what they saw unfold. According to the prosecution, Bickham sat across from Parchman and started talking to her, while the teen was walking back and forth through the car. At one point, Bickham got up and approached another passenger near a bag, and that passenger told him to back off.
Bickham briefly got off the train at one stop, then boarded again. A couple of minutes later, he and the teen got into a verbal argument, moving around the car as they yelled at each other. During the argument, prosecutors state that Bickham spit on the teen, which also hit Parchman. That's when things turned physical. One of the men grabbed Bickham by the arm while the teen girl punched him in the face, cites the prosecution.
How the attack unfolded
The group surrounds Bickham:
The prosecution team alleges that the four people involved, Parchman, the teen and the two men, surrounded Bickham and then started punching and striking him as they moved toward the back of the train car. One of the men began choking Bickham while the others, including Parchman, kept punching him and pulling at his head, according to the prosecution's description. There was a brief pause in the fight near the sliding train doors, during which Bickham reached down to pick up his headphones from the floor. The two men then forced him into the corner near the train car's sliding doors, as Parchman and the teenager closed in around him.
Pushed from a moving train:
One of the men fighting Bickham pulled the emergency lever on the sliding door while the train was still moving, forcing it open. The teen then stepped up alongside him, and they pushed Bickham out of the moving train as he struggled against them. The teenage girl grabbed him by the head and shoulder and pulled Bickham out, according to the prosecution team.
Parchman and the other man were standing directly next to them as it happened. When Bickham was pushed out, he was struck by a southbound train and killed. Before leaving the train at the State Street stop, the teen was described by witnesses as saying "he shouldn't have bothered us."
How investigators tracked Parchman down
Timeline:
Parchman's Ventra card linked to her name and phone number was used to enter the 95th Street station. Investigators also found an Instagram story posted from her account on the day of the attack, showing a selfie of her wearing the same clothes she had on in the surveillance footage. A witness also positively identified her in a photo array.
Parchman was arrested on Sept. 16 in the 200 block of North Keeler Avenue. After being read her rights, she spoke with detectives and identified herself, the teen and the two men in still photos pulled from the CTA surveillance video.
She told detectives she slapped Bickham three or four times for spitting on her and then stopped. When detectives searched her phone with her consent, they found she had searched for "good places to lay low" and "who are the police looking for" after the attack.
What we don't know:
The two other men involved in the attack have not been charged, and the investigation is still ongoing. It's also unclear what additional details may come out at Parchman's detention hearing, which was scheduled for Sept. 19.
The Source: This story uses information from a proffer provided by the prosecution team in the CTA Red Line killing case as well as a prior press release from the Chicago Police Department. This article was written from Eden Prairie, Minnesota by Maureen Breslin.