In Aurora in 2019, a gunman killed five co-workers at a warehouse and wounded others, including five police officers. In DeKalb, five students were killed and 17 others were injured in a shooting at Northern Illinois University in 2008. Less than two weeks ago, a WeatherTech worker in Bolingbrook shot three co-workers, killing one. It’s a grim community club that, once you join, makes every other shooting feel closer to home, said Clayton Muhammad, a spokesman for the city of Aurora. As time passes and national attention fades, the community is left to deal with the reality of what happened. “There was nothing else we could do,” he said. “Either we were going to fall apart over something that happened that day and killed those innocent souls and (let’s let that) define us, or we could come together.” [ What we know about the mass shooting in Highland Park ] This was not the first north suburban shooting spree during a July 4th holiday weekend. In 1999, a 21-year-old white supremacist who grew up in the North Shore communities of Wilmette and Northfield went on a multi-day shooting spree targeting members of racial and religious minorities in Chicago’s West Rogers Park neighborhood, in the Springfield suburbs of Skokie and Northbrook. Decatur, Urbana and Indiana. It killed two people, including former Northwestern basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong, and injured nine others. In the years since, other suburbs have faced workplace and public shootings. These are some of them. A large ball sits on the ice a few feet from where Greg Zanis dropped five crosses just south of the Pratt plant on Feb. 16, 2019. (Abel Uribe/Chicago Tribune) On February 15, 2019, a disgruntled employee opened fire inside the Henry Pratt Co., killing five co-workers, injuring another employee and injuring five police officers, before being killed in a shootout with police. The gunman had been ordered years earlier to give up the gun he used in the shooting after authorities discovered he should never have been issued a gun permit. He did not comply and was never forced to surrender the weapon. Every anniversary of the shooting wipes away the wounds of that day, but it’s important to remember the tragedy, Mohamed said. Years later, the reality of the shooting remains for those who lost loved ones, knew officers who were injured or who continue to work at Henry Pratt Co. Those years also forced the city to think about how to move forward, he said. Soon after, the city rallied, adopting an “Aurora Strong” mentality. That solidarity was important, but it’s also important to try to maintain unity without forever associating it with a tragedy. “It means devastation in those moments, but it also built a new level of commitment,” he said. [ Timeline: List of recent high-profile shootings in the US ] Police officers rush to the scene of a shooting on the campus of Northern Illinois University, February 14, 2008. (Eric Sumberg/Daily Chronicle) A gunman kicked in the door of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University on Valentine’s Day 2008 and fired into the room, killing five students and wounding 17 others. Less than seven minutes into the ambush, he turned the gun on himself. In the months leading up to the shooting, a series of events sent the gunman, a former NIU student, into a tailspin and triggered a violent return of mental illness, according to a report later released by the university. The former DeKalb mayor told the Aurora Beacon-News in 2019 a stunned community searched for answers in the weeks after the shooting, eventually gathering the lyrics from the NIU Huskies’ fight song: “Forward, together forward.” Although the community came out stronger, the memory of the shooting remains, Jerry Smith said at the time. Police begin the process of removing the bodies of 5 women who were killed in a shooting at the Lane Bryant store at Brookside Marketplace on 191st Street in Tinley Park on February 2, 2008. (Scott Strazzante/Chicago Tribune)
Afternoon briefing
Daily Top stories from Chicago Tribune editors, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. Days before the NIU shooting, five women were killed inside a Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park. Another woman was injured. Shortly after 10 a.m. on Saturday, February 2, 2008, four women, including two employees, were in the store when a man walked in pretending to be a delivery man. The man announced he was robbing the store and forced the four women into a back room, where he bound them with duct tape and ordered them to lie face down on the floor, police said. Two other women who entered the store at one point were tied up in the back room next to the others. When police arrived, they found five of the women dead, shot in the back of the head. A sixth woman had also been shot and survived. The case was never solved. A man comforts a woman outside the Navistar plant after a man shot and killed four others in Melrose Park on February 5, 2001. (Mario Petitti/Chicago Tribune) In February 2001, a former employee of Navistar International Corp. walked into the company’s Melrose Park factory and opened fire. William D. Baker killed four workers and injured four others before killing himself. Baker used a golf bag to hide a cache of weapons, including an AK-47 assault rifle. [email protected]
