Chicago to Evanston shooting rampage leaves at least 3 dead
CHICAGO — A man suspected of killing at least three people and wounding four more “just randomly” targeted a girl of 15, an 81-year-old woman and people of different ages in between before he was killed during a shootout with Evanston police, officials said.
The man shot dead by Evanston police was identified by Chicago police Superintendent David Brown as 32year-old Jason Nightengale, who was a suspect in three fatal shootings on Chicago’s South Side earlier in the day.
In a series of seconds-long videos posted to his personal Facebook page from Friday night on, a man displays wads of cash and alcohol in a vehicle while speaking unintelligibly to the camera. In one video, he can be heard saying, “I’m going to blow up the whole community.”
About 10:30 a.m. Sunday it appeared Facebook disabled the man’s page after many of the videos had been shared and commented on dozens of times.
Addressing reporters late Saturday, Brown explained without surveillance imaging or “a crystal ball,” police remained one step behind the shooter as he moved from the South Side to Evanston, shooting people at random along the way. There was no way to connect the shootings to one another in real-time as officers responded to each shooting scene, he said.
At one point, they believe the gunman backtracked from the fourth Chicago shooting location to the third, where he shot at police officers who
were investigating the man’s earlier crime, Brown said. A police source said a marked squad car was shot at least twice and a citizen’s vehicle also was hit, but Brown said no officers were injured and none returned fire.
The Chicago shooting rampage began at 1:50 p.m. in the 5300 block of South East End Avenue in the East Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side, when police believe Nightengale entered a garage and shot a man in the head as he sat in a vehicle, Brown told reporters. The man who died was a 30-year-old University of Chicago student, according to the school, which shared the “deeply painful news.”
“It is with great sadness that we inform our community that a current student of the University was shot and killed this evening in a park
ing garage of the Regents Park apartment complex at 5035 S. East End Avenue,” read an emailed statement from the school. “The University was notified at approximately 5:10 p.m. today that a student had been discovered in a car with a gunshot wound.”
A police source who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the student was a resident of China who had been studying at the school.
None of the victims had been identified by the medical examiner’s office as of Sunday morning and Chicago police said they did not have additional information or updated conditions of those who were shot.
Next, just after 2 p.m., police believe Nightengale traveled to the 4900 block of South East End Avenue,
where he entered an apartment building “just randomly” and began firing shots, Brown said. He shot a security guard, 46, who was sitting at the desk, in the chest, and she later died at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
A 77-year-old woman, who was getting her mail, was shot in the right side of her head and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in critical condition.
About 2:45 p.m., Nightengale then entered the back door of a building in the 5500 block of South East End Avenue and took the elevator to the 19th floor, Brown said. He got off the elevator and saw a man he knew because a relative of Nightengale used to live in the building.
Nightengale demanded the keys to the man’s vehicle but did not shoot him.