At least four people were killed and more than two dozen others were injured in shootings in Illinois, Missouri and Washington state in a deadly night of gun violence.
At least one person was killed and 22 others were injured at a shopping center in Willowbrook, Illinois, a suburb southwest of Chicago, police said. Authorities described the rally as a “peaceful celebration of Juneteenth” that began at 6pm on Saturday.
“At approximately 12:25 p.m., police were called to a 911 call alleging a fight had broken out nearby,” the DuPage County Sheriff’s Office said Sunday. “When officers responded, heard gunshots and immediately returned to the location of the rally. ”
Investigators look at the scene of a mass shooting overnight Sunday at a shopping center in Willowbrook, Illinois.Matt Marton / AP
Preliminary reports from witnesses and victims indicated “at least 20 people were shot,” Deputy Sheriff Eric Swanson said early Sunday. “At this point one victim has died.”
He said the victims were taken to nearby hospitals, adding that their names and ages were not available. Some people were also injured while fleeing, but were not hit by gunfire.
“The motive for this incident is unclear, and this is still an active investigation,” he said.
Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital said it received 12 patients Sunday in connection with the shooting, seven of whom were treated and released. Four patients remained in good condition and the person was described as in normal condition.
Some testimonies he told NBC Chicago they were leaving the rally when the shots rang out.
“We were all outside, and the next thing you know, shots just went off,” Craig Lottie said. “Everybody ran, and it was chaos.”
Two people were killed and three others injured hours earlier near the Beyond Wonderland electronic dance music festival in Washington state.
There, police said, someone fired “randomly into the crowd” at a campground near the Gorge Amphitheater in the small town of George, about 150 miles east of Seattle.
Another fatal shooting happened shortly after 1 a.m. in St. Louis. One person was killed and nine were injured, police in St. Louis.
The victims were between the ages of 15 and 19, police said Sunday. The person who was killed was 17 years old, Police Chief Robert Tracy said.
The survivors had injuries ranging from stab wounds to gunshot wounds; two people were shot in the back. A teenage girl was run over and seriously injured while running away, Tracy said. His conditions were not immediately known.
Tracy said officers in the area noticed a group of people running from a downtown building and called for backup at the same time they received several calls reporting a shooting .
The shooting appeared to have occurred at a party on the fifth floor of the building, an office space, Tracy said. The bullet casings indicated more than one gun was fired and “multiple firearms” were recovered.
A person of interest, a juvenile, has been taken into custody, Tracy said.
The mayoress of St. Louis, Tishaura Jones said at a news conference Sunday that her office was working to expand resources to keep the city’s youth away from gun violence. He also asked parents throughout the area to engage with their children and monitor their teenagers.
“We’re seeing downtown St. Louis become a place for teenagers from all over the region to come together at night,” Jones said. “The City of St. Louis is leveraging every resource we have by making significant investments and youth programming … working with communities to create safe educational spaces for children while they are not in school.”
There have been 307 mass shootings in the United States in 2023, according to the Archive of armed violence, a non-profit project that tracks incidents. It defines a mass shooting as a single incident in which at least four people, other than the shooter, are shot.
CORRECTION (June 18, 2023, 11:16 a.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of the Washington city where a shooting occurred. It’s George, not Gorge.
