Other coverage:
- Watch: Twitter videos document overnight looting and riots in Chicago
- Mayor, top cop demand action from prosecutors after 100 arrested in overnight looting, riots
- Police: Man shot while trying to escape carjacking in Loop.
- Police release details of second shooting during Monday riots.
- One alderman blasts Foxx, another targets Lightfoot after looters demolish downtown
Hundreds of looters ravaged Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, Rush Street, Oak Street, and Loop shopping districts early Monday after plans to burglarize the stores spread on social media. By sunrise, the looting was spreading to Wicker Park and other neighborhoods, according to police scanner traffic.
The motive for the crime wave is unclear. Some looters who spoke with CWBChicago reporters pointed to the police shooting of a 20-year-old man in the Englewood neighborhood earlier on Sunday. CPD said officers shot the man after he opened fire on cops who were chasing him.
“How much more of this did they think we was gonna take,” a woman asked rhetorically as she leaned on a solar-powered trash can while looters threw a patio chair through the window of Salvatore Ferragamo’s flagship store to her right.
“This been coming,” she said.
Overnight, a source in the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office wondered if the social media promotors had another motive.
Dozens of people who were charged with crimes during looting and riots earlier this year are scheduled to make court appearances this morning, the source said. Prosecutors were expected to wrap up most of the cases today with small fines and deferred prosecution deals.
Regardless of their reasons, the destructive power of the looters is clear this morning. Entire shopping malls have been torn apart. Car dealerships have apparently been relieved of inventory. And countless people have been injured, according to preliminary reports.
According to very early information, at least two and possibly three people were reportedly shot in the downtown area during this morning’s mayhem. One confirmed shooting took place near Wabash and Madison, the other near Clark and Hubbard.
In the Loop, cops opened fire on a man who shot at them near Lake and Wabash around 4;30 a.m., a CPD spokesperson said.
The first report of looting downtown came at 11:38 p.m. Sunday when witnesses reported seeing people bail out of cars to burglarize Urban Grocers at 747 South State.
Within 20 minutes, 911 calls and burglar alarm activations were flooding the city’s police dispatch center from across the Michigan Avenue and Rush Street shopping corridors.
Patrol officers reported that looters made entry to Water Tower Place. Other looters live-streamed their activities as they pillaged the Mag Mile’s Nordstrom store.
By 5:15 a.m., the city began raising the downtown bridges to limit the looters’ ability to get around.
CWBChicago will be posting additional updates throughout the morning.
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