A Chicago woman was stabbed to death mid-day Thursday on the Red Line train by a man after she said “no” to a question he asked. Jessica Hampton, 25, was stabbed by her attacker multiple times in a train car full of witnesses after a brief struggle and died on the scene. 

According to the Chicago Tribune, the incident occurred at 12:35 p.m. on a southbound train which eventually stopped at the 47th street station when numerous people fled the car while screaming and looking for a way to contact police.

The attacker reportedly asked Hampton a question – some earlier reports claimed that he asked her to “have his kids”, but those haven’t been substantiated at the time of writing – and after she shook her head and said no the attack started. During the brief struggle, the man dropped his knife, quickly retrieved it and continued his attack.

“She was fighting back, she was crying ‘help me, help me!” Andrea Patterson, a witness to the incident who later found out she was related to the victim, told the Tribune.

According to Patterson, the attacker grabbed Hampton by her neck after she fell to her knees and slit her throat and torso before walking over her body to exit the train.

“As the doors opened on the train, he walked off, stepped over her body and walked off like nothing happened,” she continued.

While Chicago’s Red Line is by far the busiest train in the city, these kinds of attacks are actually a rarity, according to local authorities. The most recent fatal incident was in 2013 while the one preceding that was in 2011 when a teenager pushed a woman down a flight of stairs while trying to get away with a stolen cell phone. He was later sentenced to 32 years in prison.

This is a tragic loss and is sure to make many people who have no other convenient way to travel feel less secure. But, more importantly, it’s another example of the undeniable consequences of what can happen when a woman simply denies someone’s advances.

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons