DUNNING SUSPECT DIDN’T SEEM ‘NORMAL’
He allegedly punched man in August; 5 dead after weekend rampage
Two months before a 67-year-old man went on a deadly shooting spree at a condo building in Dunning, police responded to the same complex when the accused gunman allegedly assaulted the son of one of the victims of Saturday’s rampage.
Sergio Macias, who manages the building in the 6700 block of West Irving Park, said the suspected shooter allegedly punched the other man in the face on Aug. 3. Macias noted that police were then summoned to the scene.
The man who was struck is the son of 53-year-old Jolanta Topolska, who became the fifth fatality of Saturday’s shooting when she died hours after the attack. A neighbor said Topolska’s son, who is thought to be in his 20s, was at their home when his mother was fatally shot.
He declined to comment when reached by phone by the Chicago-Sun-Times.
Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi wouldn’t immediately provide information about the incident in August. In a statement, Guglielmi said “detectives are in a formal interrogation with the alleged gunman and we are conferring with prosecutors on potential charges.”
“Given the current state of the investigation, we will not be making any additional public comment until charges are formally filed,” Guglielmi said. “At that point, we can get into specifics about the individual’s history and calls for service to the address”
Records show the man accused of the killings has no criminal background. The SunTimes is not naming the suspect because he hasn’t been charged.
Macias said police didn’t arrest him after the incident this summer. “I have no idea why,” he said, adding that the alleged shooter denied the accusations.
Saturday’s shootings began about 5:30 p.m. when the suspected gunman went into his next-door neighbor’s unit and fatally shot a family of three men and one woman as they ate dinner, police said.
The Cook County medical examiner’s office identified one of the four victims killed Saturday as Tsvetanka Kostadinova. The identities of the other three also shot in that unit have not been released.
The gunman next went to the building’s third floor, where he confronted Topolska and shot her, authorities said. She was taken to a hospital in critical condition but died Sunday morning.
All of the victims appeared to be adults and knew the shooter, police said.
‘He just seemed really spooky’
Even before the incident in August, the 67-year-old’s strange behavior had unnerved some of his neighbors.
A woman who lives in a neighboring condominium building said the man “was always very friendly” until about six months ago, when his demeanor changed dramatically.
“He snapped,” said the woman, who asked to remain anonymous.
“He did not seem like he was normal. He just seemed really spooky,” she added.
Alex Plociennik, a mechanic who lives two doors from the suspect, described his neighbor as being “unstable.” He acknowledged that the alleged shooter “had problems” with some of the tenants in the building, including three of the victims of Saturday’s attack.
Plociennik said the alleged gunman was accused of shutting off Topolska’s power when he managed the building a few years ago. The suspect was possibly targeting Topolska be
cause “he liked her,” Plociennik said.
Plociennik said he also remembers the alleged gunman getting into arguments with two other people who were killed. Macias recalled one of them reporting that the suspect was being rude and giving him “dirty looks” on the same day Topolska’s son was allegedly assaulted.
Ewa Zielinska, who lived next door to Topolska, said the suspect didn’t respond to greetings but would give her “creepy” looks.
“He was weird,” Zielinska said. “[It was] like he was angry all the time.”
Troubled finances
Court records show the suspected shooter’s financial situation had grown increasingly dire in recent years. Police reported the suspect was a retired construction worker, but Plociennik said he was previously employed as a truck driver.
The accused shooter filed a personal injury lawsuit against a trucking repair company based in Little Village in August 2016, though the suit was eventually dropped. Specifics of the lawsuit were not immediately available Sunday.
In January 2017, the suspect was sued by Discover Bank, which sought to recoup the more than $18,000 in credit card charges he accrued.
He declared bankruptcy the following September. In his petition, the suspected gunman said he received $1,387 each month from Social Security, just short of his monthly expenses of $1,390.
At the time of the filing, the suspect owed $24,000 to the IRS and more than $61,000 to various credit card companies.
The alleged shooter claimed his annual income had fallen off sharply in the years leading up to his petition. In 2015, he said, he made nearly $50,000. The next year, that fell to $30,000. Between January and September 2017, Social Security had provided him with $12,483.
County court records show that the suspect was in foreclosure on his condo — valued at just under $100,000 — two months after he filed for bankruptcy. That case is still pending, and his attorney in the case did not respond to a request for comment Sunday.
The suspect’s financial issues extended to the condo association. While serving as the condo’s manager, he failed to register the association with the city and didn’t keep any financial records, Macias said.
“We had to start all over,” according to Macias, who took over for the suspect in 2017.
The rampage occurred in a part of the city seldom impacted by gun violence. Records show that, prior to Saturday, the police beat where the shooting happened — 1632 — has recorded just one murder in the last five years and five murders overall in the last 10 years.