Illinois shooting: Two dead and one injured after gunman opens fire outside courthouse

Local police have announced the scene of the shooting is now secure

Two people are dead and another is injured after an early-morning shooting outside the county courthouse in Kankakee, Illinois.

Local police have several suspects in custody, and Kankakee mayor Christopher Curtis called the attack a “targeted incident.”

The scene of the shooting is now secure, according to the Kankakee County Sheriff’s Office.

“We are asking everyone to avoid the area as the investigation continues,” the sheriff’s office wrote on Facebook on Thursday.

No officers were injured in the shooting, and none fired their weapons.

Kankakee, a city of about 25,000 people 60 miles south of Chicago, has closed city buildings and schools are on lockdown as a precaution.

Aerial news footage of the site showed a cluster of police officers in the area, as well as what appears to a large blood stain on the pavement.

“From our sixth floor window, you could see people scattering and moving away from the Kankakee County Courthouse,” Michael Taylor, who owns a newspaper in the area, told ABC 7 Chicago. “This is something in my 30 years of journalism, and living in Kankakee County, that I’ve never even seen or even heard of anything like this in the area.”

State and local police were reported on the scene as part of an ongoing investigation into the shooting, which occurred about 100 yards from the courthouse, on its south side, near the facility’s jail.

A witness working on the roof of a nearby building told the Kankakee Daily Journal that he saw someone with an “AK-47-type gun” argue with another individual, armed with what appeared to be a pistol, in the middle of the road near the courthouse, before shooting them multiple times. Another witness said she took pictures of a shooter with a “long-barrel-style gun.”

A press briefing was scheduled for later on Thursday.

The Independent has reached out to Kankakee police for more information.

There have been at least 452 mass shootings in the US in 2021, according to the Gun Violence Archive, part of more than 26,685 total injures from gun violence across the country.

If trends continue, this could be the worst period for school shootings in decades.