There had to be at least 200 people in the parking lot when Mariah Dixon arrived Saturday night for what has been billed as a Juneteenth celebration outside a strip mall in DuPage County, near Willowbrook.
People, young and old, danced and ate, while others brought clothes and shoes to sell to the crowd.
”The whole idea of the celebration was a celebration of African American independence,” said Dixon, 23, from Bolingbrook. “I wasn’t expecting it to go left at all.”
Saturday was turning to Sunday as Dixon held her phone up to record her friend dancing.
Then, she remembered, the shooting started.
”I felt a bullet rush past my face,” she said. “It felt like a bumblebee passing by.”
Dixon was one of at least 23 people injured — one fatally — in the mass shooting at the strip mall parking lot along Illinois Route 83.
On Monday, DuPage County Coroner Dr. Richard Jorgensen identified the man killed in the shooting as Reginald Meadows, 31, of Willowbrook.
Residents in the apartments near the strip mall said they regularly saw Meadows with his kids at the apartment complex or at one of the stores in the strip mall.
A GoFundMe set up for Meadows said he was a father of two and “a beacon of love and strength” who “fell victim to a devastating crossfire incident that shattered the peace and joy of what should have been a day of celebration.”
Ten people were taken by ambulances to hospitals. Another seven people arrived at hospitals by private vehicle.
Four people were treated at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, said hospital spokeswoman Carol Eggers. Three were treated and released. The fourth remains hospitalized.
Another five people were treated and released from NorthShore-Edward-Elmhurst Health in Elmhurst, said spokesman Keith Hartenberger.
Both declined to provide additional information about the condition, ages and genders of the people who were treated.
There were still many unanswered questions Monday as investigators continued to scour the scene for clues that could lead them to the person or persons responsible.
No suspects were in custody Monday, the DuPage County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
Residents nearby said the strip mall has been the site of similar celebrations in years past, and that sheriff’s deputies were there earlier in the night. Sheriff James Mendrick’s office previously said deputies were monitoring the gathering but left to respond to a 911 call about a fight when the shooting started.
Dixon said she dropped to the pavement when she heard the gunfire and scrambled on her stomach under a nearby car for cover.
”There were other screams,” she remembered, “so I don’t know if anybody actually heard me, and there were other shots.”
She said her friend pulled her from under the car and sat her in the friend’s passenger seat. They sped away for a hospital but were stopped by police, who got an ambulance to take Dixon to Advocate Good Samaritan Hospital in Downers Grove.
She said doctors told her a .45-caliber bullet pierced her knee, shattering her kneecap, and lodged in her femur, breaking the bone.
She went through one surgery Sunday and is expected to undergo a second surgery later in the week. Dixon said she hasn’t slept, the images from that night replaying in her mind. Doctors told her she won’t be able to walk for months, she said. A friend set up a GoFundMe to help with expenses while she recovers.
When she went out Saturday night, Dixon said she had hoped to take her mind off Father’s Day. Her dad, Marcus Heath Dixon, died of small cell lung cancer in January 2022.
”I’m sure that this is just going to be a hard recovery,” she said by phone from her hospital bed. “It’s already very hard mentally and physically, and I think for me mentally more than physically right now.”
Late Monday afternoon, there were still visible signs of the chaos from that previous night. Yellow police tape surrounded the strip mall parking lot littered with plastic bottles, aluminum food trays, single shoes.
People huddled in small groups, stopping their conversations to watch the television news cameras parked in a row on the street. A few said they wanted to move.
One woman walked up to a sheriff’s deputy sitting in his car and told him about the blood stains — two of them — in the hallway of her daughter’s apartment building, directly behind the strip mall.
”I want her to leave now,” she later said, clutching her cellphone and shaking her head. “It’s not safe here.”
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