Search underway for man who stole 2 vehicles, fired shots in South Loop Target parking lot

FOX 32 NEWS - A series of carjackings, starting on Chicago’s West Side and ending in a South Loop store parking lot, left victims rattled and police on the hunt for a dangerous gunman Tuesday night.

“I happen to Live in the building across the street. I was walking in the first floor of the parking garage and all of a sudden I heard a woman screaming, worse than I've ever heard a woman screaming, saying he's got a gun,” said Jerry Powell as he stood on the second floor of the Target parking garage at Roosevelt and Clark.

Nearby, one of the victims hugged her husband in relief after staring down the barrel of a gun, just minutes after Powell heard her screaming for her life.

The woman in her 40’s had just put her groceries in her white BMW, returned the cart and as she walked back to her vehicle, unlocking it, a man slipped into the passenger side door and confronted her, demanding the key, her husband said.

But, he said, the key separated from the fob and when the gunman reached to the floor to get it, the woman ran for her life.

Witnesses say the gunman then ran across the garage to where a young mother with her newborn had parked her Subaru.

“When he grabbed the lady and started pulling her out of her car, all three of us started to go over there to intervene and then he started shooting and took her car and left, and she had a newborn in the backseat, she did get out of the car and then he like clipped the carrier as he was driving off,” said Jason Haag, who was at the Target shopping.

Police say the crime spree actually started when the suspect carjacked a Buick SUV in the 3700 Block of West 16th Street. He parked right next to the BMW as if he saw it as the perfect target. Witnesses still can't believe what happened, particularly the brazenness of the attack at 1:30 in the afternoon.

“It's not a person, it's an animal,” Haag said.

“This man had absolutely no problem assaulting a woman and shooting at a woman that had a two week old child in a car seat. There is a point where you cross the line between crime and crime against humanity, and this crossed that line,” Powell said.