Update:
Police are seeking a white male whom they said opened fire from a rooftop Monday morning during a July 4th parade in a Chicago suburb.
Breitbart News reported at least six were killed and 24 injured in the incident.
NBC Chicago noted that shots rang out at 10:14 a.m. in Chicago’s Highland Park neighborhood.
Police are seeking “a white man between 18 and 20 years old with a small build and longer black hair.”
Lake County Sheriff Sgt. Christopher Covelli indicated that the suspect shot into the parade from a rooftop.
Covelli added, “We’re asking everybody to stay indoors. Stay vigilant right now. This person has not been identified. By all means, at this point, this appears to be completely random.”
The Chicago Sun-Times quoted Highland Park resident Miles Zaremski. “I heard 20 to 25 shots, which were in rapid succession,” Zarenski said. “So it couldn’t have been just a handgun or a shotgun.”
Parade goer Alexander Sandoval said, “We saw the Navy’s marchers and float pass by, and, when I first heard the gunshots, I thought it was them saluting the flag and shooting blanks. But then I saw people starting to run, and the shots kept going. We started running.”
Reporting from Breitbart.
Six people have been killed and 16 more wounded in a shooting at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois, the local media reported on Monday, citing authorities.
The shooting took place about 10 minutes after the parade began at 10am local time in the Chicago suburb. Police urged people to disperse and were seen patrolling the area with rifles in search of the shooter.
A video has surfaced online showing people running in panic as they hear shots being fired during the celebrations.
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering tweeted that the town’s Fourth Fest had been canceled and asked residents to avoid the downtown area.
Sources cited in local media claimed the shooter may have been firing from atop a high building.
Several neighboring communities, including Deerfield, Evanston, and Skokie, have canceled their Fourth of July events “out of an abundance of caution.”
Illinois congressman Brad Schneider, a Democrat, tweeted that he had been at the start of the parade route when the shooting broke out.
“Hearing of loss of life and others injured,” he said in a tweet.
The shots were fired around Central Avenue and Second Avenue along the parade route in downtown Highland Park, an affluent suburb north of Chicago. While its urban neighbor is infamous for high levels of gun violence, Highland Park itself is generally viewed as remarkably safe, with violent crime rates 75% lower than the national average.
Reporting from RT News.
