Some 500 teens crowded into Downtown Oak Park Halloween evening. Police received a call of shots fired at 7:49 p.m. No injuries were reported from the shots which were reportedly fired near Lake Street and Forest Avenue. One bullet hole was later found by police.
By shortly after 8 p.m. Oak Park police had closed Lake Street to auto traffic as officers observed multiple fights breaking out among the teens. Oak Park police, in the words of one observer, began “corralling” the young people and with the help of Chicago police officers began moving them east on Lake Street and across Austin Blvd. There was an unconfirmed report of shots being fired from within the same group on Race Avenue in Austin.
Officers from other suburban departments were called to assist. River Forest squad cars were seen with lights flashing in the parking lot of the River Forest Town Square at Harlem and Lake. A Forest Park squad was parked in the strip mall at Harlem and Circle Avenue.
An effort by Wednesday Journal to reach a police department watch commander was unsuccessful as all department supervisors had congregated in Downtown Oak Park, a police dispatcher said. By 10:30 p.m. Lake Street was largely quiet with a small group of some 25 teens still gathered near Chipotle, just east of Harlem Avenue. There was no visible police presence at that time.
Asked if this crowd gathered spontaneously or was organized via social media, Oak Park Police Chief Shatonya Johnson said through a spokesperson late Friday night that police have not yet identified any social media source but that it might have been a bit of both.
Dan Yopchick, a spokesperson for the village of Oak Park, said that the resident who first reported what sounded like a gunshot to police later discovered a bullet hole in a painting inside their home on Forest Avenue.
“At approximately 8:40 p.m., the above resident was walking around their apartment and discovered what appeared to be a bullet hole in a painting on the east wall of the unit., which faces Forest,” he said. “They removed the painting from the wall and discovered a small hole. Furthermore, it appeared as if a glass bottle on a kitchen counter was possibly struck as a defect in the bottle was consistent with being struck by a ricochet or projectile.
The investigation is continuing, Yopchick told Wednesday Journal Saturday morning.
