CHICAGO– A man suspected of shooting and killing eight people in the Chicago suburbs this weekend was linked to most of the victims, authorities said Tuesday, a day after the 23-year-old shot himself to death after of a confrontation with authorities in Texas.
Joliet police and the Will County Sheriff’s Office said investigators believe Romeo Nance shot seven people, most of whom were family members, at two homes in Joliet on Sunday before randomly shooting two men in other nearby places. One of those men survived.
Illinois authorities said there is no evidence to provide a motive for the murders at this time.
“We can’t get inside his head,” Joliet Police Chief Bill Evans told reporters. “We just don’t have any idea why he did what he did.”
Police did not release the names of the victims and said they had not yet determined their exact relationship to Nance. They said the victims included: a 14-year-old girl, a 16-year-old girl, a 20-year-old woman, a 38-year-old woman, a 38-year-old man, a 47-year-old man – an elderly woman, a 35 years old and a 28 year old man.
Nance fatally shot himself Monday night after U.S. Marshals located him near Natalia, Texas, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southwest of San Antonio, authorities said. His death was announced just hours after Illinois authorities used social media and a news conference to share initial details of the killings there.
Medina County, Texas, Sheriff Randy Brown said the sheriff’s office received a call Monday about a person suspected of the Chicago-area murders heading into the county on Interstate 35. Brown said he believes the suspect was trying to reach Mexico.
“It looks like they are all headed to Mexico,” which is about 120 miles (193 kilometers) south of Natalia along Interstate 35, Brown said Tuesday.
Officers from multiple agencies confronted Nance, Brown said. Brown said her office’s only role in the standoff near Natalia was to support other law enforcement agencies on the scene.
The Texas Rangers are investigating Nance’s death and believe he shot himself, said Lt. Jason Reyes, spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, of which the Rangers are a part.
Reyes said he could not provide any other information about the circumstances of Nance’s death or his confrontation with law enforcement officials, saying his agency was only called in to investigate after the fact. The Rangers routinely investigate deaths involving law enforcement officers in Texas.
Natalia is more than 1,690 kilometers (1,000 miles) from Joliet, where Nance is suspected of gunning down eight people at three locations in the Chicago suburbs.
The shootings represent the fourth mass killing in the United States this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. The third occurred Sunday in another Chicago-area suburb, Tinley Park, where police charged a man with killing his wife and his three adult daughters.
The database defines a mass murder as an attack in which four or more people have died, not including the perpetrator, in a 24-hour period.
Illinois authorities previously said they did not know a motive for the murders, but Nance knew the victims. The FBI’s fugitive task force had been assisting local police in their search for the suspect, Joliet Police Chief William Evans said.
The victims were found Sunday and Monday in three different homes, authorities told reporters at a news conference Monday night.
One of the people killed was found with an apparent gunshot wound Sunday outside apartments in Will County and pronounced dead at a hospital. The Will County Sheriff’s Office identified him as a 28-year-old man originally from Nigeria who had been living in the United States for about three years.
Seven more bodies were found Monday in two homes on the same block in Joliet, located about 6 miles (9.6 kilometers) northwest of the scene police first discovered.
“I’ve been a police officer for 29 years and this is probably the worst crime scene I’ve ever been associated with,” Evans said during a news conference outside Joliet Homes Monday night.
Authorities said they also believe Nance was connected to another shooting in Joliet that injured a man on Sunday, but they would not discuss their evidence.
Curtis Ellis said he lives next door to the man wounded in that shooting and captured him on a surveillance camera pointed at his street.
Footage shows the driver of a red car speaking briefly to Ellis’ neighbor, driving to the end of the block before making a U-turn, then stopping and shooting nine times. Ellis said he was watching the Detroit Lions play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in an NFL playoff game when he heard gunshots, saw his neighbor injured outside and called the police.
“It could have been me or my wife in the front yard, which is scary,” Ellis, 56, said. “You haven’t done anything to anyone, why would someone just aim to shoot you?”
Teresa Smart lives about a block from where seven of the victims were found and had said she was worried she and her family wouldn’t be able to sleep Monday night.
“This is too close to home,” he said, adding that police cars had been blocking streets throughout the neighborhood.
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Miller reported from Edmond, Oklahoma. Associated Press writers Jake Bleiberg in Dallas, Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin; Claire Wild in Chicago; and Lisa Baumann in Bellingham, Washington; contributed to this report.