Judge was warned not to free career criminal before he set train lady on fire: 'Real and present threat'

The violent firebug who allegedly set a woman ablaze on a Chicago train earlier this week was released by a judge in a separate assault case in August — despite prosecutors petitioning for the serial criminal to be jailed .

Lawrence Reed, 50 — who left a woman fighting for her life in Monday’s horrific caught-on-camera train incident — had been sprung in the earlier case Aug. 22 with electronic monitoring even though prosecutors warned a judge it wasn’t enough to protect the community from him, according to a report by CWB Chicago .

But Cook County Judge Teresa Molina-Gonzalez freed Reed on a felony aggravated battery charge for allegedly slapping a social worker so hard that she was knocked out during an Aug. 19 assault inside the psychiatric ward of the MacNeal Hospital, court re