Death Sentence

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¶ Chicago, Jan. 3rd— A twelve-year-old boy shot and wounded his sixth-grade teacher yesterday when she scolded him for classroom misbehavior, Chicago police reported.

¶ Chicago, Jan. 3Rd— When a robber with his hand in his coat pocket threatened to shoot a CTA bus driver if the farebox wasn’t handed over, the bus driver shot him.

The robber proved to be unarmed.

The robber carried no identification. He died at County Hospital without regaining consciousness after emergency surgery.

“He said he had a gun in his pocket,” said the driver, James Sweet, 31, of 3108 W. Beach. “I didn’t aim to be another dead robbery victim.”

CTA regulations prohibit transit employees from carrying guns. “But I’d rather be fired and alive than employed and dead,” Sweet said. “As far as I was concerned it was my life or my job.”

Sweet said he had been carrying the gun since he first heard about the vigilante.

The robber boarded Sweet’s Number 46 bus on Western Avenue near Addison and began to threaten Sweet as soon as the doors closed, Sweet said. There were no other passengers on the bus. Sweet immediately activated the secret distress signal which has been installed on all CTA buses, but no police responded immediately to the alarm.

“He gave me no choice,” Sweet said. “I don’t carry a key to the farebox. I couldn’t hand it over. And even if I could, why should I?”

Sweet has been a bus driver for seven years. “It’s been getting worse and worse,” he said. “Drivers get knocked over nearly every day now.”

The robber, described as being in his early twenties, is being investigated through fingerprint identification.

A CTA spokesman said Sweet would not be suspended or dismissed immediately; a decision is forthcoming, he said, pending departmental investigation.

No criminal charges have been brought.