At least six people are dead and 24 were taken to hospitals after a shooting at a July Fourth parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, and officers are searching for a suspect, police said Monday.
The authorities were still treating the case as an active shooter situation after 1 pm CDT (8 pm CET), with the gunman considered to be “armed and dangerous”.
Highland Park Police Commander Chris O’Neill, the incident commander on scene, urged people to shelter in place as authorities continued the search.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that the parade began around 10 am CDT (5 pm CET) but it was suddenly halted 10 minutes later after shots were fired. A Sun-Times reporter saw blankets placed over three bloodied bodies. Several witnesses told the newspaper that they heard gunfire.
Hundreds of parade-goers — some visibly bloodied — fled the parade route, leaving behind chairs, baby strollers and blankets.
Police told people: “Everybody disperse, please. It is not safe to be here.”
Highland Park Police said in a statement early Monday afternoon that five people had been killed and 19 people were taken to hospitals. The number rose to six, with 24 hospitalised in total.
The police said authorities are still searching for the suspect, who was described as an 18- to 20-year-old white man with long black hair.
Lake County Major Crime Task Force spokesman Christopher Covelli said at a news conference that the gunman apparently opened fire on parade-goers from a rooftop using a rifle that was recovered at the scene.
Local news channel ABC7 Chicago reported that the ATF bureau has ordered urgent tracing on who purchased the rifle and when.
Highland Park is an affluent north shore area of Chicago with no prior cases of mass shootings.
Pools of blood and upturned chairs
Video shot by a Sun-Times journalist after the gunfire rang out shows a band on a float continuing to play as people run past, screaming. A photo posted to social media appeared to show pools of blood near upturned chairs in downtown Highland Park.
Gina Troiani and her son were lined up with his daycare class ready to walk onto the parade route when she heard a loud sound that she believed was fireworks — until she heard people yell about a shooter.
“We just start running in the opposite direction,” she told The Associated Press.
Her 5-year-old son was riding his bike decorated with red and blue curled ribbons. He and other children in the group held small American flags. The city said on its website that the festivities were to include a children’s bike and pet parade.
Troiani said she pushed her son’s bike, running through the neighbourhood to get back to their car.
In a video that Troiani shot on her phone, some of the kids are visibly startled at the loud noise and they scramble to the side of the road as a siren wails nearby.
It was just sort of chaos,” she said. “There were people that got separated from their families, looking for them. Others just dropped their wagons, grabbed their kids and started running.”
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said in a tweet that he is “closely monitoring the situation in Highland Park” and that Illinois State Police are assisting. The ISP said in an email that it was assisting in the response to an active shooter reported around 10:24 am CDT (17:24 CET).
“There are no words for the kind of monster who lies in wait and fires into a crowd of families with children celebrating a holiday with their community. There are no words for the kind of evil that robs our neighbours of their hopes, their dreams, their futures,” Pritzker said in a statement.
Since the Highland Park attack, a number of other neighbourhoods and suburbs of Chicago have cancelled their 4 July celebrations out of precaution.