Crime and Public Transportation

New Jersey State Police say 40‑year‑old Hernando Garcia‑Morales of Palisades Park was arrested Jan. 9 after a baseball‑sized rock smashed through a northbound New Jersey Turnpike school‑bus window on Jan. 7, fracturing an 8‑year‑old girl’s skull as her Yeshivat Noam third‑grade class returned from a Liberty Science Center field trip. He faces multiple state charges, including aggravated assault, resisting arrest and weapons counts from Turnpike troopers, plus additional aggravated‑assault, criminal‑trespass and criminal‑mischief charges from Bogota police tied to other alleged incidents. DHS told Fox News it has lodged an ICE detainer, asserts Garcia‑Morales is a Mexican national in the U.S. illegally with a two‑decade record that includes a 2006 weapons/theft arrest and downgraded 2023 Hackensack burglary‑related charges, and blames New Jersey’s sanctuary policies for his continued presence in the community. School officials say police told them he confessed to the Turnpike rock attack and "several other" rock‑throwing incidents. The case is being seized on by federal officials as evidence in the national fight over state non‑cooperation with ICE, while civil‑liberties advocates online are warning against tarring entire immigrant communities based on one serious but still‑unadjudicated allegation.

Chicago prosecutors say 40-year-old Demetrius Thurman has been charged with first-degree murder after allegedly recording himself fatally stabbing 37-year-old Dominique Pollion, who was asleep on a CTA Blue Line train early Saturday. Court records indicate Pollion had been sleeping in the car for nearly an hour and had no interaction with Thurman before the suspect allegedly approached from behind at about 2:17 a.m., began recording on his phone, and stabbed him twice with a knife, prompting the victim to wake screaming and collapse after trying to flee. Investigators say CTA surveillance cameras and Thurman’s own phone captured the attack and its aftermath, including video of Thurman’s face and a clip where he allegedly turned the camera on himself at Clark/Lake station and said, “somebody got his ass,” before leaving. Police used images from transit video with Illinois’ facial-recognition system, a prior police encounter days earlier, and a relative’s identification to track him down; when arrested Sunday, he was allegedly wearing the same clothes and carrying a phone with the stabbing video and photos of other sleeping passengers. Prosecutors say Thurman has a prior record including disorderly conduct and DUI, and the case comes as violent incidents on Chicago trains are already drawing federal scrutiny after a separate November attack in which a woman was set on fire on a CTA train.