PUSHED A SWIFTIE ONTO THE TRACKS. TRAIN WAS SECONDS AWAY. SHE WALKS.
CHICAGO — June 4, 2023, Division Blue Line, 3:40 p.m. A 24-year-old heading to Taylor Swift at Soldier Field is standing on the platform with her friends. CTA cameras catch Neveah King coming down the stairs, lunging, and putting the fan on the tracks.
The victim lands on her feet. She is not hurt. A Blue Line train rolls in “within seconds” of her climbing back up. King runs. On the way out she is accused of knocking down another woman. Cops have her about 30 minutes later.
They charged it like what it looked like: attempted murder.
This week that charge is gone. King pleaded to aggravated battery of a transit passenger. Judge Mary Anna Planey gave her 54 months. Illinois cuts that in half on paper — 27 months. She has already sat 1,185 days in Cook County Jail since the July 1, 2023 arrest. Time served eats the sentence. She is not expected to do another day.
That is the whole math. A shove onto live tracks with a train in the hole became a battery plea and a walk after three years of pretrial time.
The victim survived because she landed standing and got up fast. That luck is now the difference between a murder docket and a credit-for-time-served release. Chicago has other platform cases that did not get that luck — including the recent Red Line death of Kyle Bickham, which is why this file is getting the reaction it is.
Crime Vault will say the quiet part: the act was the same whether the train missed or not. The system charged the intent, then bargained the intent away, then subtracted the jail calendar until the number hit zero. She pushed a concertgoer onto the third-rail side of a platform and the city is done with her.
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