Police arrested six people early Sunday after vandals broke into stores and damaged parked cars in Lincoln Park and Lakeview. Gunfire was reported near at least one of the storefront break-ins and police recovered a firearm during the arrests.
Most of the damage has been reported from the 2400 block of North Clark to the 2900 block of North Broadway. But looters also struck stores along the Clybourn retail corridor and in Boystown, according to police reports.
The first alarms came from Steve Quick Jewelers, 2470 North Clark, shortly after 1 a.m. Sunday. Witnesses told police that carloads of people broke the store’s glass.
For the nearly three hours, alarms sounded and witnesses reported seeing people emerging from cars to target retails shops across the area as police worked to locate the offenders.
In addition to Steve Quick Jewelers, incidents are known to have occurred at:
- Sprint, 2850 North Broadway
- Target, 2650 North Clark
- Country Fresh Finer Foods, 2583 North Clark
- Gamestop, 2725 North Clark
- Verizon, 3710 North Halsted
- Benjamin Moore, 3234 North Clark
- Damage to parked cars, 3000 block of North Waterloo
- Zale’s Jewelers, 2754 North Clybourn
- Marshall’s, 1834 West Fullerton
- Multiple stores at Riverpoint Center, 1750 West Fullerton
A private security guard detained a female on the 2700 block of North Clark around 1:15 a.m. Police arrested her for criminal damage to property.
Around 1:45 a.m., gunfire was widely reported near Broadway and Surf Street moments after the witnesses saw the Sprint store break-in. No one was reported injured, but one 911 caller saw a man get something out of a vehicle and walk into an alley where shots were then fired.
The big break for officers came when cops stopped a suspicious vehicle at Surf and Pine Grove around 3:15 a.m. While officers handled the traffic stop, another break-in was reported at the nearby Gamestop store. Police saw Gamestop merchandise in the stopped vehicle and arrested all five occupants.
A firearm was recovered from the vehicle.
Police also responded to a robbery involving a carload of offenders on the 500 block of West Cornelia around 2:30 a.m., but CPD did not have details of the case at the time of this report.