A man who was stabbed to death on the Red Line over the weekend was trying to stop his alleged killer from attacking another passenger, Cook County prosecutors said Wednesday.
Tony Polk killed 54-year-old Troy Johnson during a struggle that began inside a Red Line car and ended with Polk stabbing Johnson in the chest as the pair tumbled onto an L platform in Chinatown Saturday, Assistant State’s Attorney James Murphy said during a bond hearing Wednesday.
Polk, 40, and a female acquaintance had boarded the train, and Polk exchanged words with a person sitting near him, Murphy said. After moving to a seat across the aisle from his friend, Polk allegedly lunged at the woman and struggled with her over a folding knife she had tucked in her belt.
Polk, snatching away the knife, then grabbed a passenger seated across from Johnson and “put the knife to him,” Murphy said. The woman, who had cut her hand during the struggle with Polk, fled the train car. Johnson, who’d been holding a beer, jumped up to help the man being held at knifepoint by Polk, Murphy said. Polk and Johnson struggled, and Johnson managed to push Polk off the train and onto the platform, Murphy said, when Polk lunged and “repeatedly stabbed” Johnson, who was wounded in the chest and arm. Johnson died at the scene.
The woman had gone to a nearby restaurant to seek help for the cut on her hand, and called Polk, who told her he had “beat up” Johnson. The two met up on Archer Avenue, where Polk gave the woman back the knife, which she told police had no blood on it. The pair went to a Green Line station, where the woman cut Polk’s shirt to make a bandage for a wound he’d suffered.
Surveillance video on the train and platform captured the ensuing attack, Murphy said. Polk and the woman went to a park near the Blue Line, where she looked up information on her phone and saw reports that a man had been stabbed to death on the Red Line. When she confronted Polk, he “said he did not know he did that,” Murphy said.
After seeing her picture on the news Sunday, the woman called police from an Red Line station at Fullerton, and asked police to pick her up so she could “clear her name”— hiding the knife in a planter at the station before police picked her up. The woman later told police where to find the knife and Polk’s shirt, which he had thrown in the trash after it was cut to make a bandage.
Polk, who was a month away from completing his parole for an aggravated robbery conviction, was ordered held without bail on a charge of first-degree murder. He was arrested Monday morning at his home in South Shore.
Court records show that Polk has been arrested dozens of times since 1997 on charges that include drug possession, aggravated assault, unlawful use of a weapon, battery, robbery and domestic battery.
Prior to being taken into custody Monday morning, he’d already been arrested twice in 2019. In January, he was arrested on retail theft charges in the South Loop. In June, he was charged with assault after being arrested in South Shore.
Prison records show that Polk has four previous felony convictions — three of which were for robbery.
In December 2014, Polk was sentenced to six years in prison after he pleaded guilty to an armed robbery in the 6800 block of South Jeffrey. He was given credit for the 388 days he spent at the Cook County Jail and he was released from prison on parole on March 7, 2019, prison records show.
Polk is no stranger to high-profile criminal cases in Chicago.
In 2016, he testified in the criminal trial of Donnell Flora, who was convicted of giving a gun to his niece, who later shot and killed 14-year-old Endia Martin.
Polk said that, while he and Flora were held in the Cook County Jail in 2014, Flora admitted to him that he gave his niece the gun, with Flora saying of the teen: “That b---- got what she deserved.”
