Couple shares harrowing tale of interstate BB gun shooting

PARK RIDGE, Ill. (WLS) -- As police continue to search for suspects who used BB guns to shoot out car windows in northwest suburban Park Ridge Tuesday night, one couple shares their harrowing story exclusively with ABC7 Eyewitness News.

Greg Fontana says he and his wife Renee will never forget being shot at while driving by someone with a BB gun. The Northwest suburban couple were returning home to Park Ridge from a trip to Wisconsin. Greg, a retired engineer, was behind the wheel of their minivan traveling northbound on the Tri-State Tollway when the unexpected happened.

"If they had hit the passenger side window, Renee would have had a face full of glass," Greg says.

"I heard a tremendous, loud crash bang behind my head to the right and I turned around and I saw a hole in the window here," Renee says.

The couple escaped the danger by taking a nearby exit ramp, and immediately called police who, unbeknownst to the shaken motorists, were already responding to at least two other attacks nearby.

Those two incidents both took place along a stretch of Talcott Avenue. In one of them, the adult daughter of a 70-year-old motorist said her mother's driver side window was shattered by a pellet as they headed through the forest preserve area. She also said they're now scared to drive there.

"We were just on pins and needles as we're driving just those two blocks, thinking are they still out there?," she said.

Investigators say the three incidents are related and happened between 7:45 and 8:15 p.m. Investigators say a witness saw two teenage boys running into the woods near the first shooting, one of them wearing a black shirt and holding what looked like a BB gun. Officers searched the area but found nothing.

"Keeping that window up will afford some protecting from a BB. It may shatter that window, but the alternative is getting hit in the face and we don't want that," says Deputy Chief Lou Jogmen of the Park Ridge Police Department.

Greg and Renee are thankful no one was hurt but now will think twice about where they travel and when.

"Out here you're just not expecting it, the chances - it's all probability, right?" Greg says.

No arrests have been made.