Iryna Zarutska’s family files wrongful death lawsuit alleging no security guard was on train

A woman gets on a train to go home and doesn't make it. Now her family is in court arguing something that shouldn't need arguing: if you're going to run a public transit system, you have to actually secure it. No guard on that car. No fare enforcement stopping a man who reportedly hadn't paid to be there in the first place. Those are the kinds of details that sound small until you realize they're the whole story.

This isn't really a lawsuit about one missing employee. It's about a transit agency that apparently treated basic safety measures as optional line items rather than the actual job. Fare enforcement isn't about nickel-and-diming riders. It's one of the few tools a system has for keeping track of who's on board and flagging people who shouldn't be there. When that tool gets quietly dropped, and security gets thinned out too, you're left with a train that's just a metal box moving strangers past each other with no accountability at all.

Cities love to talk about "reimagining" transit safety, usually right up until something like this happens, and then it's suddenly a legal matter for the courts to sort out instead of a policy failure anyone in charge wants to own. CATS will presumably argue this in procedural terms, staffing levels, budget constraints, the usual. None of that changes what a family is left staring at.

Whatever the lawsuit ultimately proves in legal terms, the underlying complaint reads as painfully simple. Riders were told a system was safe to use. It wasn't. That gap between what was promised and what was actually provided is the whole case, and it's worth remembering the next time a city insists cutting corners on enforcement is a minor administrative choice rather than a decision with a body count attached.