Attacked Transit Worker says CTA Made her Wait Hours for Treatment

Safety at Work

Chicago, IL (WorkersCompensation.com) – A Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) worker said management made her wait hours for medical treatment after she was attacked on a train last month.

The attack comes as attacks on transit workers have been on the uptick this past year, and state legislatures and federal agencies work to protect transit workers.

Diajanese Ringgold, 32, was working as a car servicer apprentice at 3 p.m. on Nov. 30, cleaning rail cars and retrieving lost items. After dropping a lost phone off at the booth at the Kimball Brown Line, Ringgold noticed a man take the broom and bucket she was using to clean with.

Ringgold said she approached the man and asked him for her cleaning supplies back, but that he began “acting crazy” and started to scream and cuss at her while swinging the broom. As she attempted to get the broom back, the man began kicking her, she said.

“The kicks landed all over and I walked off the train crying hysterically and in shock,” Ringgold told WGN News.

Ringgold said a co-worker intervened and broke up the fight. When the shock of the attack began to wear off, Ringgold said she realized she was injured. She suffered a pinched nerve in her leg, bruising on her legs and ribs, and injuries to her hand.

Ringgold said an ambulance was called to the scene, but she was told she couldn’t leave without her supervisor there. Because she was not allowed to leave, she said she had to acknowledge that she declined EMS. Around 5 p.m., two hours later, the supervisor showed up and told her that she needed to sign Injured On-Duty papers and that she was required to take a breathalyzer and drug test.

Ringgold said she had to wait another two hours for the woman to come and administer the drug and alcohol tests.

After the tests were administered, she said, she drove herself to Northwestern Memorial Hospitals and stayed the night at the hospital for treatment. She said she is upset with who she was treated and is currently in a legal fight for her workers’ compensation over the incident. She said she is going through physical therapy for the pinched nerve which makes walking difficult.

The CTA said they are looking into the incident.

“CTA takes the safety of all our employees very seriously. We are looking into all details of this incident. Ms. Ringgold is represented by legal counsel and has a pending worker’s compensation claim on file, and we are moving through that process at this time,” the agency said in a statement.

CTA is currently fighting with the federal government over safety concerns. The Federal Transit Administration announced recently that it had rejected a safety plan submitted by CTA and is threatening to withhold as much as $50 million in federal funding from the agency. The FTA issued the special directive in December after finding that the agency’s worker assault rate had exceeded the national average every year since 2015.

Transit workers have been under attack in recent years. While the rate of assaults on transit workers this year is not reported yet, the Amalgamated Transit Union has said it has seen a 232 percent increase in the rate of operator assaults between 2014 and 2024.

The FTA noted in September that the Charlotte Area Transit System has seen a jump in its rate of assaults on transit workers, with six major assaults in 2025, compared to one in all of 2024. In New York City, local reports indicate an increase in NYPD officers and transit workers in subways, but no final number or report on the number of assaults for the year has been released.

In September 2024, the FTA issued General Directive 24-1 that required transit agencies subject to the FTA’s Public Transportation Agency Safety Plans to conduct a safety risk assessment, identify safety risk mitigations and provide the FTA a report on how they are addressing worker safety in regard to assaults. Its first analysis of agency response in May 2025 showed that more than two-thirds of the 700 transit agencies covered by the General Directive had determined safety risk mitigations were necessary to reduce the risk of transit worker assaults and that the agencies were working on mitigation efforts.

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