Man Charged With Storing Cyanide in Chicago Subway

A man was charged Monday with storing deadly powdered cyanide in an underground passage that is part of Chicago’s mass transit system.

Joseph Konopka, 25, allegedly broke into a Chicago Transit Authority storage room under the downtown district and stored sodium cyanide and potassium cyanide.

Officials did not say how much of the chemicals they found, and said they didn’t want to speculate about why Konopka had the chemicals.

Konopka was charged Monday with possession of a chemical weapon and ordered held pending a hearing Wednesday. Authorities said Konopka, formerly of De Pere, Wis., was unemployed and had been living in the Chicago subway system for several weeks. The FBI said he was wanted in Wisconsin because he failed to appear on charges he vandalized power stations in Door County.

University of Illinois-Chicago police arrested Konopka and a juvenile Saturday night on suspicion of trespassing, according to an FBI affidavit filed in federal court. They were found in a steam tunnel under the university’s education building, the FBI said.

University police had staked out the tunnel because of a rash of burglaries on campus in recent weeks.

Konopka was carrying a vial containing sodium cyanide-sodium carbonate, the FBI said. The juvenile told federal agents that Konopka had taken over an area within a CTA underground passageway to store chemicals, the FBI said.

Konopka told police he had keys to various CTA substations, the FBI said.