CHICAGO (AP) – A man killed three people and injured four others in a series of shootings lasting about four hours that started on Chicago’s South Side and ended with his death in a shootout with police in a parking lot just north of the city .
Investigators are trying to pinpoint a motive for the attacks, which began Saturday afternoon with the murder of a 30-year-old University of Chicago student who was shot in the head while sitting in his car in a parking garage in the Hyde Park neighborhood. Chicago Police Commissioner David Brown told reporters. He has not released the names of the victims.
The shooter, 32-year-old Jason Nightengale, then ‘just randomly’ walked into an apartment building a block away, where he shot a 46-year-old security guard sitting at the desk and a 77-year-old woman who got her mail, Brown said. The guard was pronounced dead in a hospital and the elderly 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 supermarket and fired shots, 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 she left the store, Nightengale shot a 15-year-old girl who was driving a car with her mother, leaving the girl in critical condition, police said. He then went back to the supermarket and shot officers investigating the earlier shooting. None of them were injured, Brown said.
Nightengale then drove about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north to Evanston, which borders Chicago, where police responded to a report of shots fired in a CVS. Nightengale had apparently walked into the pharmacy, announced he was robbing it, and fired shots that hit no one, authorities 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 officers in a parking lot, which led to a shootout in which he was shot and killed, Cook said.
Brown said the information he shared at the press conference was preliminary and could change. He said the researchers had 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 from what he’s doing next, and we all know we don’t have a crystal ball where he’s going, nor do we have it on any of our POD cameras, Brown said. “We respond to the scene while these crimes are taking place, get information and again, he goes to the next as we try to keep track of what happened before.”
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An earlier version of this story was corrected to indicate that police said the woman at the IHOP had been shot in the neck, not in the head.