CHICAGO (AP) – A man killed three people and injured four others in a series of shootings for about four hours that began on the South Side of Chicago and ended with his death in a shootout with police in a parking lot north of the city.
Investigators are trying to determine the reason for the attacks, which began on Saturday afternoon with the death of a 30-year-old University of Chicago student who was shot in the head while sitting in his car in a parking lot in Hyde Park, O Chicago police superintendent David Brown told reporters. He did not release any of the victims’ names.
The sniper, Jason Nightengale, 32, then “randomly” entered an apartment building a block away, where he shot a 46-year-old security guard who was sitting at the table and a 77-year-old woman who was receiving his mail, said Brown. The guard was pronounced dead in a hospital and the older woman, who was shot in the head, was hospitalized in critical condition, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Nightengale went to another building nearby and stole a car from a man he knew. He then went to a convenience store and fired, killing a 20-year-old man and injuring an 81-year-old woman in the head and neck, Brown said. The woman was also in critical condition.
After leaving the store, Nightengale shot a 15-year-old girl who was in a car with her mother, leaving the girl in critical condition, police said. He then went back to the convenience store and shot the policemen who were investigating the previous shooting. None of them were injured, said Brown.
Nightengale then drove about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north to Evanston, which borders Chicago, where police responded to a report of shots fired inside a CVS. Nightengale apparently went into the pharmacy, announced he was stealing and fired shots that did not hit anyone, officials said. He then crossed the street to an IHOP restaurant, where he shot a woman in the neck. She was in critical condition, Evanston police chief Demitrous Cook told reporters.
Nightengale left the restaurant and was confronted by police officers in a parking lot, leading to a shooting in which he was shot and killed, Cook said.
Brown said the information he shared at the news conference was preliminary and could change. He said investigators have very little information about Nightengale, but plan to release more details as soon as they get it.
“When you hear this whole story, it looks like you have a crystal ball of what he’s doing next, and we all know that we don’t have a crystal ball where he’s going next, nor do we have that on any of our cameras POD, ”said Brown. “We are responding to the scene as these crimes happen, obtaining information and, again, he is going to the next one as we try to follow up on what happened earlier.”
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An earlier version of this story was corrected to reflect that the police said the woman at IHOP was shot in the neck, not in the head.