Man injured in shootout outside O'Hare Airport terminal, window damaged, Chicago police say

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A man was wounded in a shootout after several people got into a fight outside a terminal at O'Hare airport Wednesday morning, Chicago police said.

The shooting took place at about 12:54 a.m. on the street outside Terminal 2.

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Police said several men got into a fight near one of the baggage carousels. The altercation quickly moved outside.

One witness told police one of the men got a weapon from a car, and opened fire before returning to the vehicle.

A 25-year-old man was shot twice in the lower body. He was taken to Lutheran General Hospital, where he was stable, police said.

Dozens of shell casings littered the crime scene, which shut down the terminal's Arrivals area for hours, with law enforcement on scene.

A single bullet hole surrounded by thousands of shards of shattered glass was just a fraction of the evidence left strewn about the scene. Investigators paced the traffic lanes early Wednesday morning.

According to a police report obtained by the ABC7 I-Team, evidence techs counted at least 57 bullet casings.

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James Van Schaick heard at least some of those shots from his Hilton Hotel room.

"The first round, it sounded like really rapid firing. much like automatic," Van Schaick said. "I don't know if it was or not. there was a lot of echoing and resonance to it."

In one video shared hundreds of times on social media, there are frenzied images of chaos before gunfire erupts.

The police report reviewed by the I-Team described what police said was an argument turned shootout.

"There was a round of firing and then there was a pause and a number of individual shots too," Van Schaick said. "I looked down and just saw people scattering."

In the report reviewed by the I-Team, investigators wrote that people scattered in multiple dark and tan vehicles. Investigators locked down the Terminal 2 traffic area for hours into daylight.

Mayor Brandon Johnson acknowledged the shootout at O'Hare, and Sunday's shooting of a tourist in Streeterville, while speaking after a City Council meeting Wednesday afternoon.

"This altercation... happened outside the airport... and all of the lower level terminals are fully operational," Johnson said. "But with both of these incidents, what they show us is that the danger in our city, particularly around illegal guns, continues to pose a threat to the streets of Chicago."

One traveler said she was asleep at the time, when a bullet pierced the window just feet from where she was.

"I have no clue how I did not hear this, and when I woke up I saw all the cops," traveler Raquel Barajas said. "I was terrified; so, I honestly, these ear plugs saved my life. Getting up would have made me more scared and put me in a worse scenario. So, I'm just really grateful to be alive right now."

As they returned from a trip to Arkansas Wednesday, Chicago natives John and Rose Sullivan say they are shocked but not surprised to learn about the morning's violence.

"You hope you're safe. There are so many things that can happen, not just at O'Hare, everywhere. You never know," Rose Sullivan said.

No one else was injured. Police are interviewing a second person, and Area Five detectives are investigating.

Investigators will process dozens of bullets trying to trace them to multiple shooters that turned an airport arrival zone to a bullet-riddled crime scene.

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