Three family members were found fatally shot, including a 73-year-old man, late Friday afternoon inside an apartment building in the Mayfair neighborhood, said officials.
About 5:20 p.m., officers found the three after a family member requested a well-being check at an apartment building in the 4600 block of North Kostner Avenue, police said.
They were found in the family’s home in the building. They were found shot in various parts of their bodies, police said.
Two of them were brothers in their 30s, and the third man appeared to be their father, according to police.
Police officials said they preliminarily believe it may have been a murder-suicide domestic-related incident.
According to police, citing preliminary information, the shooter’s family recently forced him to move out of the residence.
He came back and fatally shot his brother and father, before killing himself, police said. The shooter has a history of mental illness, according to police.
Walter Eliasen, 80, who lived next-door to the family, said he talked to the younger son about a block party scheduled for tomorrow minutes before the shooting at around 2:30 p.m. this afternoon.
The father and the older son were talking in the backyard, he said.
“A minute after we talked, we heard bang bang bang,” he said. “I thought it was a nail gun.”
“We didn’t think it was shots because they were always fixing things,” he said.
Eliasen said the family, including the parents, two sons and two daughters, had lived there for about a decade, though the sons had recently moved out. They lived in the Chicago area and were still frequently around, he said.
“They were quiet, they kept to themselves, but we would talk sometimes and they seemed like a great family,” he said.
Mike Rufo, 48, was with Eliasen when they heard the shots. They’d been setting up for the block party when the younger son pulled up to the home, he said. The man waved and said he’d be at the party the next day, Rufo said.
“He seemed very calm. He didn’t seem to have what went on there on his mind,” Rufo said.
Like Eliasen, he assumed the bangs they heard were the sound of home repair work until he saw police cars gathering on his street later that afternoon.
“I was worried someone could have been saved if we’d said something sooner,” he said. “But we talked to police, and it sounds like there wasn’t anything we could have done.
Edna Puschmann, 74, who lives down the block, said she didn’t know the family well but often saw the father outside, working on the small garden in front of his home.
“He loved that garden,” she said.
The fatal shooting adds to other violence Friday within the Northwest Side’s Albany Park patrol district.
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About 4:45 a.m., 34-year-old Manuel Arizaga was shot and killed about two miles away in the 3600 block of North St. Louis Avenue, in the Irving Park neighborhood, while he was about to go to work. Chicago police were looking into whether his death stemmed from a robbery gone awry. No one was in custody for his slaying.
baiduhai’s Jeremy Gorner contributed.