By Natasha Korecki, Zachary Schermele and
David K. Li
-
NBC News
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill.
— Letham Burns wanted to get to the 4th of July parade in Highland Park early.
Just as he was settling in to watch and enjoy the festivities with his friend and their five children, Burns, who practices shooting as a competitive sport, heard a recognizable sound.
“20 to 30 rounds were heard,” he said.
"It was definitely semi-automatic, on a fast cadence
," he added.
Security elements search for a suspect after a mass shooting at the July 4 parade, Monday, July 4, 2022, in Highland Park, Ill., a suburb of Chicago. Nam Y. Huh / AP
Burns yelled at the children: “Shooting!
Get back in the car!
Move!".
They were about 150 yards from where the attacker was perched on the roof of a business, firing indiscriminately into the crowd with a "high-powered" rifle, according to police.
All the training for a shooting that the children had received in school paid off
, Burns said.
They kept calm and quickly left.
Back at home, they wanted to go to the pool, but the helicopters were flying over the place.
And the killer was still on the loose.
“It is an area where many Jewish people live.
We hope it's not something instigated by anything other than mental illness," Burns said.
[“A person could be seen with a rifle”: a witness recounts the horror experienced during a parade shooting]
Witnesses to the shooting, which left at least six dead and 38 injured in Highland Park, an affluent suburb of Chicago, described a scene of confusion that gave way to panic and horror.
Kristen Carlson, who took refuge in her mother's house with her two older children a few blocks away, said that as families and parade-goers fled, she could "see the terror on their faces."
Carlson sheltered others in the backyard of her mother's home in the 600 block of Highland Park.
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"People just ran, and they just dropped their stuff, and it was terrifying," she told MSNBC's Hallie Jackson.
"I don't live here anymore, but I'm scared to get in my car and go home, so we're hiding here," she added.
City officials urged people near the scene to seek shelter due to an "active attacker" incident because the killer, described as a white male in his early 20s, was still at large.
Dr. David Baum, who attended the parade, told NBC Chicago that the bodies he saw were "not an image that someone who is not a doctor can easily process."
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“They had horrible injuries, the kind of injuries you probably see in wartime, the kind of injuries that only happen when bullets can rip bodies apart,” he said.
“These bodies were dead.
They immediately covered them up and tried to get other people out of there,” he added.
Baum said several medical professionals stayed behind to help treat the victims.
Other witnesses recounted an atmosphere of confusion at the beginning of the massacre around 10:00 am central time.
Some believed the shots were fireworks.
"A person could be seen with a rifle": witness recounts the horror experienced during parade shooting
July 4, 202202:28
"I thought it was part of the parade," Gabriella Martinez told NBC Chicago.
"Then literally like a second [later], we all started to panic."
Larry Bloom said other attendees at first thought the shots were part of a float display.
“I was screaming and people were screaming.
We panicked, and they were just dispersing, and I, you know, didn't understand.
You know, it happened too fast,” she claimed.
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Highland Park resident Adrienne Drell heard no shots fired but was confused as the Highland Park High School band suddenly broke formation and fled.
“I thought it was a rehearsed way to spread out.
They started running and I was like, 'Huh?'” Drell, a retired journalist, told NBC News.
“And a guy came up to me and said, 'You've got to get out of here!'
Then a policeman with a big dog came up to me and said, 'Get out of here!
Get out of here!".
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Amairani Garcia told NBC Chicago that she ran with her daughter to a nearby McDonald's and hid there until a cousin was able to shelter them in a "safe" place.
“You don't expect it. Today, we don't feel safe
,” Garcia said.
Another Highland Park resident, Eduardo Gonzalez, said he would have gone to the parade if his wife hadn't had to work.
He dropped her off at work and then drove home.
Not long after, from inside her house, she heard screaming outside her and saw a crowd running outside her house.
A woman who ran by yelled at him: “There is an armed attacker!”
[Flights Canceled, Delays, and Thousands of Passengers Stranded on Independence Day]
Gonzalez moved from Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood to Highland Park a year ago.
“Maybe three times a year you would hear an occasional gunshot [in Chicago],” González said.
He gestured toward the sea of military and emergency vehicles across the street from his house.
"We've never seen anything like this,"
he said.
