A fatal shooting at Clark Street Beach, just south of the Evanston campus, resulted in a shelter-in-place order affecting the NU campus for over an hour Wednesday evening.
No NU students or staff were involved in the shooting, but the suspects were said to have left the scene driving north on Sheridan Road through the campus.
Mike Nolan
Don’t they know that NU is a “Gun Free Znone?”
GoB1GCats
rsl
If the suspects are a product of Evanston Public Schools, maybe they think the sign reads
FREE GUN ZONE?
Mike Nolan
At least they’d be able to type Zone correctly.
Go B1GCats
rsl
I dated 2 ETHS grads ( not at the same time!). Both were pretty smart women. One went to NU undergrad ; the other Kellogg
Harry
Crazy the level of violence and crime.
I don’t recall a single violent crime on or around campus during our tenure 1998-1993. Maureen lived at 1835 Hinman across the street from the beach and she was NEVER concerned about walking day or night. We had no money or nice belongings so we were a poor target for theft.
We used to go to Water Tower Place getting off the el at Chicago/State all the time during school. Shooting at the McDonalds with 10 shot and 3 dead – 6 months ago. Our most visited el stop and our most patronized McDonalds outside of Evanston during school.
Life is cheap and there is no shame in theft in the modern west.
One of the reasons we moved from Evanston to Lincoln in 1977 was that we weren’t happy with the schools in southeast Evanston (2 blocks from Main Street) and couldn’t afford the non-public schools that were on average much better.
Good students can prevail even in less-than-great schools but the statistics on other students are often depressing.
There wasn’t a lot of crime in SE Evanston back then, and not a lot near campus, though I remember some incidents on Central a few blocks from the stadium.
Mike Nolan
I guess that I am one of the rare NU students who were mugged at knife point near campus in 1988. I was walking back from my lab late one night to an apartment on Ridge west of Tech when a couple of teen muggers (Evanston residents) ran up, demanded my wallet, and ran off. They weren’t exactly master criminals because, as Mark pointed out, students are not likely to be lucrative targets. They also got caught a few minutes later after the Evanston police responded immediately. They were still holding my wallet with my ID and a few dollars. Their claim that they had ‘found’ the wallet didn’t seem too credible.
Onto the more sinister crime topics, a bunch of FALN terrorists (Puerto Rican nationalists) got caught along the beach just south of campus with a van load of weapons about 1980. I don’t recall their target, if it was even known.
My last year at NU (71-72) I lived in an apartment in what was called the Juneway Jungle just north of Howard Street (still part of Chicago, though, not Evanston.) The el yard was just outside the back door, a quiet neighborhood it was not!
That block and several surrounding ones were torn down in the early 80’s, but back then I often walked from there to campus and back, even at night after the bus stopped running. Not sure I’d want to do that today.
Mike Nolan
Since I spent many years covering crime, first in Chicago and then in LA, before returning to sports, there is a code to deciphering what happened last night at the beach south of campus, and it’s not very difficult to understand what went down, even if the newspapers don’t want to come right out and say it:
Now ask yourself: what are the circumstances under which three teen males are out at night and find themselves the victim of deliberate gunfire? Especially when the police commander says, in cop talk, “nothing in the investigation indicates that this was a random act …”
The areas of concern for all, but especially Northwestern, are that this shooting, took place at a beach frequented by students, all the more so as the weather is beginning to turn. And the gunman/men fled toward campus.
If I were the new Northwestern president, I would be having emergency meetings with the Evanston and Chicago police departments.
USC is an island in South Central LA. The neighborhood has gotten better, much better, but it’s far from ideal. All the same, LAPD is vigilant to the extreme around SC, and it’s because the university is crystal clear about expectations.
People, we have already had nearly 150 mass shootings in this country in some 100 days. A friend of mine from my time at NU has a son who is now a junior at NU. The young man was 40 yards away from this shooting last night. He said it sounded like firecrackers and then he and his friends said, uh-oh.
Let’s all be careful.
Best to all, Alan
Unless attitudes have prevailed, and what I read in the media suggests they have not, as far as Evanston officials are concerned Northwestern is nothing but trouble and expense.
The crime statistics may paint a very different picture, but politicians only use statistics when they bolster their arguments, not when they refute them.
This sounds like a drug deal gone wrong. Sadly, that’s something Chicago area people hear about on a daily basis, and it’s not confined to ‘bad’ neighborhoods (if it ever was.)