HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. — Letham Burns wished to reach at Highland Park’s July Fourth parade early.
Just as he was organising lookout spots for himself, his good friend and their 5 kids to benefit from the festivities, Burns, who’s a aggressive shooter, heard a distinguishable sound.
“We heard 20 to 30 rounds,” he stated. “It definitely was semiautomatic, in a rapid cadence.”
Burns shouted to the children: “Gunfire! Back to the car! Move!” They have been about 150 yards from the place the shooter was stationed, atop a enterprise, indiscriminately shooting into the group with a “high-powered” rifle, police stated.
All of the lively shooter trainings the youngsters had undergone at college paid off, Burns stated. They remained calm and exited rapidly. Back residence, they tried going to the pool, however helicopters have been hovering overhead. And the shooter was nonetheless on the unfastened.
“It’s a very Jewish area. We’re hoping it’s not something that’s instigated by anything more than mental illness,” Burns stated.
Witnesses to the shooting, which left at least six folks useless and 24 others injured in Highland Park, an prosperous Chicago suburb, described a scene of confusion giving method to mass panic and horror.
Kristen Carlson, who sheltered in place at her mom’s home just a few blocks from the scene along with her two older kids, stated that as households and paradegoers fled, she may “see the terror on their faces.” Carlson helped others shelter in place within the yard of her mom’s home within the 600 block of Highland Park.
“People just ran, and they just left their stuff, and it was terrifying,” she told MSNBC’s Hallie Jackson. “I don’t live here anymore, but I’m afraid to get in my car and go back home, so we’re just hiding here.”
City officers urged folks to shelter in place Monday afternoon, calling it an “active shooter incident” because the shooter, described as a white man with darkish hair in his late teenagers or early 20s, remained at giant.
Dr. David Baum, who attended the parade, informed NBC Chicago the our bodies he noticed have been “not an image that anyone who’s not a physician would have an easy time processing.”
“They had horrific accidents — the sort of accidents you’d in all probability see in wartime, the sort of accidents that solely in all probability occur when bullets can blow our bodies up,” he stated. “These bodies were gone. They covered them up immediately and went on to trying to get other people out.”
Baum said several medical professionals stayed behind to help treat victims.
Other witnesses recounted an atmosphere of confusion at the start of the massacre around 10 a.m. Some thought the sounds of gunfire were fireworks.
“I thought it was part of the parade,” Gabriella Martinez told NBC Chicago. “Then, literally like one second [later], we all started getting into a panic mode.”
Larry Bloom said other attendees initially thought the gunshots were coming from a display on one of the floats.
“I was screaming, and people were screaming,” he stated. “They were panicking, and they were just scattering, and I, you know, we didn’t know. You know, it was right on top of us.”
Highland Park resident Adrienne Drell didn’t hear gunshots, but she became confused seeing the Highland Park High School band suddenly break formation and flee.
“I thought that was a heck of way to disperse. They went running, and I thought, ‘Huh?’” Drell, a retired journalist, told NBC News.
“And a guy came up to me said, ‘You got to get out of here!’ … Then a cop with a big dog comes up and goes: ‘Get out of here! Get out of here!’”
Amairani Garcia told NBC Chicago she ran with her daughter to a McDonald’s nearby and hid there until a cousin was able to take them to a “secure” place to shelter.
“You don’t expect it,” Garcia stated. “Nowadays, we don’t feel safe.”
Another Highland Park resident, Eduardo Gonzalez, said he would have gone to the parade had his wife not had to work.
He dropped her off at her job and then drove back home. Not long after, from inside his house, he heard screams outside and saw a stream of paradegoers sprinting past his home. He said a woman running by screamed to him: “There’s a shooter!”
Gonzalez moved to Highland Park a year ago from Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood.
“Maybe three times a year you’d hear [the] occasional gunshot,” Gonzalez said of his time in Chicago. He gestured to the sea of emergency and military vehicles across the street from his home.
“Never did we have anything like this,” he stated.