A 19-year-old University Park man is wanted by police in connection with a shooting that left another man dead at Orland Square Mall Monday night.
Jakharr Williams, who is the subject of a manhunt, should be considered “armed and dangerous,” Orland Park police said in a news release.
There is an active parole warrant for Williams, police said.
The shooting happened about 6:45 p.m. at a lower level food court at the Orland Square Mall near 151st Street and La Grange Road, according to Orland Park police.
The shooter was seen in an altercation with Javon Britten, 18, when he pulled out a handgun and fired multiple shots, striking Britten in the chest and grazing a bystander’s leg, police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office said.
The mall closed after the shooting and police located shoppers who “sheltered in place” inside stores and escorted them out, Orland Park Deputy Police Chief Joseph Mitchell said.
Police officers from many surrounding towns have been inside the mall Tuesday.
Little Village activist Raul Montes Jr. called for tougher gun laws and “harsher” sentencing in light of the shooting.
“It’s an outrage to hear that somebody is shooting inside a mall in a food court,” Montes said outside the mall Tuesday. “There are children, senior citizens. … It might be an isolated incident, but everybody is a target at that time.”
Montes is offering a $2,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and prosecution of the shooter.
The morning after a gunman opened fire in the Orland Square Mall, retirees in gym shoes were strolling the fluorescent-lighted walkways, employees soaped up the floors in the food court and soft pop music floated down from the speakers.
But things weren’t quite back to normal. Plastic jars littered the floor in a nutrition store — knocked over in an apparent rush to get out of the mall as gunshots rang out.
And 18-year-old Aseel Aliyan, who runs an ornament stand at the edge of the food court where the shooting occurred remained jittery.
Aliyan was working when she heard a single gunshot. Workers had been hammering just a few feet from her. So she thought nothing of the sudden crackle — until she heard three more shots.
“I just looked around. Everyone started running,” she said. “So I started running. I left my purse.”
Outside the mall, Aliyan found a 16-year girl and her 3-year-old brother shivering in the cold. The children’s mother was still inside the mall, Aliyan said.
So the mall worker invited them into her car so they would stay warm. It would be another two hours before the children were reunited with their mom.
“I felt so bad. I couldn’t leave them alone,” Aliyan said, adding she sent a video of the children to the mother’s phone.
Aliyan said her father dropped her off at work Tuesday. Her purse was as she had left it — untouched.
Elsewhere in the mall, several retirees who stroll the mall in the winter months to stay fit were largely unfazed by the shooting, praising mall security and the local police.
“I’m just glad the doors were open when I got here,” said Larry Kostbade, 78, of Mokena. “This is my winter haven, my winter Florida.”
Kostbade said he doesn’t feel unsafe.
“That guy ain’t going to shoot me,” Kostbade said. “He shot who he wanted to.”
