‘Person of interest’ found on West Side after 20-year-old Skokie man fatally shot, 15-year-old girl wounded at Rosemont fashion outlet mall, officials say

Police have arrested a person of interest on the West Side of Chicago after a masked gunman ‘targeted’ a 20-year-old man, killing him and wounding at least one other person, including a 15-year-old girl at a shopping mall in Rosemont on Friday night, officials said.

The two victims were taken to hospitals, where Joel Valdes, 20 and of Skokie, was pronounced dead at 8:10 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office and Rosemont police.

The gunman, in his mid-20s with a mask covering his face, opened fire at Valdes at 7:08 p.m. at the Fashion Outlets of Chicago mall, 5220 Fashion Outlets Way, Rosemont Police Sgt. Joe Balogh said.

Valdes was found lying on the ground on the first floor south hallway, a short distance from the food court, shortly after officers swarmed the scene. The 15-year-old girl, who was shot in the right wrist and grazed in the leg, was found in a washroom nearby Valdes. Her condition had stabilized.

Earlier, officials said there was a third person shot who ran away, but Balogh said no other victims had been found as of Satuday afternoon in the “isolated incident.”

The shooter fled in a Maroon 2008 Honda with “other unknown subjects,” according to Balogh, but around 9:30 p.m., the Honda was stopped on the eastbound Eisenhower Expressway near Laramie Avenue. The car’s owner was taken into custody and being questioned as a person of interest, Balogh said.

A gun was seized at the scene as evidence and no charges have been announced.

As the mall was locked down, evacuated and searched, some people, including shoppers, were stuck inside until 11:15 p.m. Officials set up a reunification site at Caddy Shack restaurant, where anyone looking for friends and family could meet, according to Rosemont Public Safety.

One of those shoppers was Luis Elijio and his family, including his 5-month-old daughter, who were browsing inside the Diplomatic store on the lower level of the mall when a woman outside of the store suddenly opened the doors of Diplomatic and screamed: “They’re shooting!” Elijio said.

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“And right after that I heard what sounded like an automatic weapon,” Elijio said while recovering with his family in the lobby of the nearby Crowne Plaza hotel, which is connected to Caddy Shack.

His first thought was his 5-month-old daughter – he wanted to make sure she was safe, he said. They all ran to the back of the store with the rest of the shoppers at Diplomatic while an employee quickly locked the front doors as people ran out of the mall.

After dropping her husband off at O’Hare, Jennifer Dwyer and her 14-year-old son, Aidan, decided to go shopping to wait out the afternoon traffic back home to Naperville, she said.

They were about to leave the Columbia store around 7 p.m., “and then we heard gunshots,” Dwyer said. “Like pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, like at least five or six. Sounded pretty close.”

Dwyer froze, until one manager went over to them and started yelling, telling them to go to a back storage room. About 10 shoppers ran into the back room while the other manager locked the doors.

While they were in the storage room, Dwyer looked around for a safer room that would lock after learning the storage room didn’t lock. She found a nearby bathroom and made a mental note to pull her son in there if a shooter managed to get into the store, she said.

“And then when we were in there (in the storage room) I started looking around to see if, ‘okay if somebody does come through those doors, what can I throw,” Dwyer said.

They were in the storage room a little over an hour, until a SWAT team went in and told them to walk out with their hands to their sides.

Just before 10 p.m. Dwyer and her son sat in the lobby of the Crowne Plaza hotel waiting for their daughter after they were told it wasn’t certain they could get their car out of the parking garage Friday night.

“I’m just very thankful that we were where we were and not any closer to where the shooting was,” Dwyer said. “It’s sad but I am one of those people where like when my kids were younger and I would be at a restaurant I would always kind of figure out where the doors are, where the exits are, kind of be prepared. But I guess it is sad that that’s the society we live in.”

An autopsy for Valdes is scheduled for later Saturday.

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