Evanston police have released footage from officers’ bodyworn cameras and a patrol car that shows the final moments of Jason Nightengale’s cross-town shooting spree on January 9.
Evanston cops fatally shot Nightengale as he ran across Howard Street, one video shows. The 32-year-old had just shot a woman inside a nearby IHOP restaurant, according to police. Earlier in the afternoon, Nightengale shot six people in a series of shootings across Chicago’s South Side. Three of those victims died the same day.
The woman he shot at IHOP, 61-year-old Marta Torres, succumbed to her wounds one week later.
Officers’ bodyworn cameras show cops chasing after Nightengale and one is heard repeatedly ordering him to get on the ground as they run. A barrage of gunfire is heard as Nightengale crosses through traffic on Howard Street and then collapses on the stoop of a Dollar General store.
The video does not clearly show who fired the first shots, but Evanston Police Chief Demitrous Cook said on January 9 that Nightengale “got into a shootout with” his officers.
According to a Sun-Times report, the gun Nightengale used has been linked to other “shooting incidents” in Chicago.
CWBChicago reported the day after the shooting spree that police “are now looking at some of the city’s unsolved murder cases to see if there may be links to Nightengale.”
Police are working to determine how Nightengale got the gun, which has been on the street “a long, long time,” the paper said.
CPD has declined to identify individual crimes that Nightengale might be linked to. The department has specifically declined to comment on rumors that Nightengale might be responsible for two random slayings of men in the Rogers Park neighborhood.