Evanston Police Monday afternoon told reporters the Sunday night shooting incident on Green Bay Road that left one teenager dead and four others with gunshot wounds was a targeted attack and that the victims all knew each other.
Sgt. Ken Carter, during a brief news conference at the Civic Center, said the three male victims were standing by a car at 1950 Green Bay Road, the address of a Mobil gas station, and the two female victims were inside the car.
Police released no details about the shooter or shooters, how the attack was carried out or how they fled the scene.
“The motive is under investigation,” Carter said, and police “are working diligently to find who’s responsible.”
The victim who died was identified by the county medical examiner’s office as 17-year-old Karl Dennison. Police believe all the victims were residents of either Evanston or Skokie and it’s believed Dennison was a student at Niles North High School.
The four hospitalized victims — two males and two females — were all between 14 and 18 years old. Police said one 14-year-old victim is in critical condition. The others have what are believed to be non-life-threatening injuries.
Mayor Daniel Biss offered “our deepest condolences to the victims” at the news conference and said the city would do “everything we can to get to the bottom of what occurred” and would “redouble efforts at violence prevention.”
Biss has campaigned to “reimagine” policing in the city, but so far none of the proposed changes have been implemented and only a few of the police department positions eliminated in this year’s budget have been restored in the 2022 budget the City Council adopted last week.
The city’s homicide toll for the year now stands at six — the highest yearly level in more than two decades.
The mayor and police spokesmen declined to take questions from reporters during the news conference.