A 30-year-old man from Chicago has been charged with murder after four people were fatally shot on a train, authorities said.

The suspect, identified by Forest Park Police as Rhanni Davis, is accused of four counts of first-degree murder.

The victims all appeared to be asleep on a Blue Line train in the Chicago suburb of Forest Park when they were shot just before 05:30 local time (10:30 GMT) on Monday, police said.

Three of the victims were found dead at the scene, while the fourth died later in hospital, according to police.

Two of the victims have been identified by the authorities as Simeon Bihesi 28, and Adrian Collins, 60.

The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office later said one of the other two victims was a 64-year-old woman named Margaret Miller. The fourth victim has been identified as a man but his name has not yet been released.

Deputy Chief for the Forest Park Police Department Christopher Chin said the shooting appeared to be a “random act of violence”, saying the gunman “shot and killed four victims when literally they were sleeping on the train”.

“This wasn’t a robbery. It didn’t appear that he was in a fight with anybody else,” he said.

On Tuesday, prosecutor Kim Foxx described the shooting as “inexplicable” as she announced the charges.

“It is horrific,” she said. “We want answers.”

Police said surveillance footage showed the attacker walking through the train, and shooting four passengers who appeared to be asleep in two different carriages. The four victims were not sitting together.

The suspect is due to appear in court on Wednesday.

The Blue Line train runs 24 hours a day between Forest Park and Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and is run by the Chicago Transit Authority, the United States’ second largest public transportation system.

Gun violence is common in the United States, where there are more firearms than people.

Earlier on Tuesday, police in Louisiana arrested an 11-year-old boy who is accused of fatally shooting the city’s former mayor and his daughter.

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Protesters blocked the entrance to Mexico’s lower house on Tuesday, prompting the ruling party to convene in a gymnasium to vote on a contentious new law to directly elect judges.

The demonstrators in Mexico City, many of whom work in the judiciary, were voicing their anger at President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s plan to fire more than 1,600 federal judges, including those on the supreme court, and replace them via public elections.

In response, lawmakers from the ruling Morena party called a session in a sports complex in the east of the capital. They were sat on folding chairs discussing the changes that have prompted pushback from investors and foreign powers including the US. A vote by the lower chamber could be held as soon as Tuesday, at which point the constitutional changes would pass to the Senate.

“Today officialdom ignored hundreds of workers from the judiciary,” said Jorge Romero, an opposition lawmaker for the National Action party (PAN), wrote on X, calling the changes “destructive”. “We live in a Mexico without dialogue.”

Judges and judicial workers have been on strike over the reforms since last month, with international legal groups and organisations warning that judicial independence and even democracy are at risk. On Tuesday, the country’s Supreme Court justices voted 8-3 to join the strike.

Leftist López Obrador’s Morena party will have a near supermajority in congress for his final month in office. He is pushing the reform as part of a package of changes that would reshape the Mexican state.

President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office in October, has backed his plans, arguing that it will reduce corruption in the judiciary and decrease political control over it.

“This reform is happening, because that is what the Mexican people decided at the ballot box. We apologise to people who don’t agree with our work . . . we have a social contract,” said Ricardo Monreal, Morena’s leader in the lower house, said earlier on Tuesday.

Under the new rules, lawyers who want to run in elections to be judges must have minimum grades in school, a law degree and five years of relevant experience. Candidates will be assigned TV and radio advertising slots and would not be allowed public or private funding, although regular Mexican elections are commonly funded by cash that is not audited.

The US ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, has warned that the plan was a risk to democracy, bilateral trade and would make it easier for cartels to buy influence in the courts.

López Obrador branded the comments “disrespectful” interventionism and said the relationship with the embassy of its largest trading partner was on “pause”.

Two judges delivered rulings in the past week that aimed to pause or slow the legislative process. Monreal said Morena would ignore the rulings as they were invalid.

The Justice Department announced terrorism charges against six Hamas leaders including Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the group’s deadly Oct. 7 attack against Israel.

The other defendants named in the indictment unsealed on Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan are Ismail Haniyeh, Mohammad al-Masri, Marwan Issa, Khaled Meshaal and Ali Baraka. Three of the defendants—Haniyeh, Issa and Masri, who is also known as Mohammed Deif—have been killed in recent months.

The Hamas leaders face seven counts, including conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization resulting in death, conspiracy to murder U.S. nationals, conspiracy to bomb a place of public use resulting in death.

A DOJ official said in a statement on background that the charges were filed under seal on Feb. 1, in order to be ready to take Haniyeh into custody if needed. But after Haniyeh’s death and other recent developments in the region, the seal was no longer necessary, the official said.

“Today, the Justice Department unsealed charges against Yahya Sinwar and other senior leaders of Hamas for financing and directing a decades-long campaign to murder American citizens and endanger the security of the United States,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a video statement. “The charges unsealed today are just one part of our effort to target every aspect of Hamas’ operations. These actions will not be our last.”

Garland mentioned the recent news that six hostages held by Hamas, including U.S. citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, had been killed.

He said the Justice Department is investigating Goldberg-Polin’s murder, as well as the killings of other Americans by Hamas.