They feared for their lives after a gunman shot two people in the parking lot of a Gurnee amusement park Sunday night. “The way people panicked, it made us feel like the shooter was close. And when we saw the police come into the park, we thought the shooter was loose somewhere inside,” the Kenosha resident said. The public shooting was not random and appeared to be targeted, Gurney police said. No arrests had been made as of Monday and police are continuing to investigate, according to Gurnee Police spokesman Shawn Gaylor. But the shootings caused chaos, confusion and fear among the park’s hundreds of visitors. Many fled to the same parking lot where shots were fired. Others jumped fences and tried to break through locked exit gates to escape. The bullets struck a 17-year-old Aurora boy in the upper thigh and struck a 19-year-old Appleton, Wisconsin woman in her lower leg, police said. Both shooting victims were treated at Advocate Condell Medical Center for non-life-threatening injuries and released Sunday night, police said. A third victim who suffered a shoulder injury refused additional treatment. After watching the guests take refuge in the funnel cake, Tahir saw people running and heard shouts about the attacker. Her family ran to a bathroom, where an employee led them to a hiding place before escorting them out of the park 20 minutes later. She lied to her children as they hid. The commotion was over fireworks, he told them. But the kids heard people yelling for the shooter. Tahir worries about them going back to school in two weeks. He knows no place is safe, he said. The 32-year-old mother had previously talked to her children about what they should do if a shooter attacked their school. They need to be prepared wherever they go, he said. “I feel helpless. I don’t know what to do to get lawmakers to understand that gun violence needs to stop,” he said. Authorities said a white sedan pulled into the Six Flags parking lot around 7:50 p.m. and drove to the front entrance of the park. Gurney police said more than one person got out of the sedan “and began shooting at another person in the parking lot.” After firing multiple shots, they “returned to the white sedan and quickly fled the area,” according to a news release from Gurney police. “This was not an active shooter incident inside the park,” police wrote. Eddie Cardenas was with his fiancee and their three children when his mother-in-law called. He had left the park for the car to start preparing food. “Stay inside the park. There’s a shooter out here. There’s a shooter out here. There are bodies falling,” he yelled into the phone after seeing the shooting unfold. Damn it. These are the six flags in Gurnee Illinois. My friend just sent me another video inside the park and people were climbing through barbed wire to escape pic.twitter.com/IrwL0diuju — cripple ice (@TurtlesInARace) August 15, 2022 Shocked by the news, Cardenas and his fiancee began planning. But then dozens of people started running, Cardenas said. “There’s a shooter! There’s a shooter! There’s a shooter!” he remembered listening. The couple grabbed their children – a seven-year-old boy, a five-year-old boy and a five-month-old girl – and started running. They took cover behind the rising steel coaster Raging Bull and took off again moments later. Their stroller was moving too slowly, so Cardenas dumped it and put his 5-year-old on his shoulder. His fiancee also left behind a wallet. His seven-year-old son ran ahead and was nearly lost in the confusion. Cardenas saw police with guns drawn. In a video shared with the Tribune, people were screaming and pulling the children along. Outside the park, Cardenas was reunited with the nearly 30 family members he had joined for the trip to Great America. He saw frightened uncles waiting for their teenagers, who had left earlier to go for walks. “We didn’t know,” said the 30-year-old from Joliet. “It was a huge panic.” The seven-year-old told him he never wanted to go to Six Flags again. His five-year-old tossed his shiny plastic guns into a garbage bag on Monday morning. “These are not toys,” he told his parents, according to Cardenas. His wife ordered five-pound backpack shields for the kids, who are going back to school soon. After the shooting, the family took a moment to pray in the car. One of Cardenas’ children thanked God the family was not killed. Cardenas began to cry. “The world we live in, where our five-year-old and seven-year-old have to worry about being shot, shot and killed, is scary. It’s a really scary world,” he said. To protect Six Flags Great America, authorities are using security cameras inside the park and in the parking lot, a Six Flags spokesman said. Plainclothes patrols also patrol the park, which has a Gurney police substation. “Six Flags devotes our greatest time, talent and resources to safety and security,” Six Flags spokeswoman Rachel Kendziora told the Tribune. “There are layers of precautions both inside and outside the park to protect guests and team members… We are incredibly grateful to our team members who responded in a professional manner to take care of our guests and to the Gurnee Police Department for their continued presence and commitment to Six Flags Great America,” Kenziora said. The Great America amusement park is an 18-mile drive from Highland Park, where a mass shooter opened fire on a crowd gathered for the Fourth of July parade, killing seven and injuring dozens. [ Highland Park shooting: Man accused of killing 7 people at July Fourth parade pleads not guilty ]
Afternoon briefing
Daily Top stories from Chicago Tribune editors, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. Tane Walker was at a parade in Highland Park when the shooting happened. On Sunday, he had left Six Flags earlier in the afternoon, hours before crowds in Chicago’s north suburbs once again fled fearing gun violence this summer. Worries about what might happen if a gunman tried to attack the park crossed his mind earlier Sunday, the 16-year-old said. You don’t feel safe to leave the house or go anywhere in public, she added. Walker will soon return to the classroom at the school where he and his family received trauma counseling after the mass shooting in Highland Park. “Nowhere is really safe until there’s a change,” he said. Freelancer Cliff Ward contributed. [email protected] Twitter: @jakesheridan_
