4 killed, 7 injured in stabbing attack in US's Illinois

A man went on a stabbing rampage in a residential neighborhood in northern Illinois on Wednesday afternoon, killing four people and wounding seven in an attack that included a home invasion and involved multiple crime scenes, authorities said.

Carla Redd, the police chief in Rockford, a city of about 1,50,000 some 80 miles northwest of Chicago, said at a news conference that a suspect had been taken into custody in the attack, the motive of which was unclear.

Three victims were killed at the scene, and a fourth died at a hospital, authorities said. The seven wounded were taken to area hospitals, where their conditions ranged from critical to stable.

The police did not name the suspect but said he was a 22-year-old man. They noted that no one else was being sought in the attack. “We don’t believe there’s any other suspects that are on the run or at large at this particular time,” Redd said at a news conference.

The victims who were killed include a 15-year-old girl, a 63-year-old woman and two men, 49 and 22, the police said. A mail carrier was among those killed, according to a spokesperson for the US Postal Inspection Service.

Winnebago County Sheriff Gary Caruana said that among the injured victims was a woman who was running away from the suspect after an apparent home invasion. She and a person who had tried to help suffered stab wounds, the sheriff added.

The chief added that not all the victims had been stabbed, though she noted that no gunshots had been fired.

Four patients were taken to OSF Saint Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, a hospital spokesperson confirmed.

Rockford Mayor Tom McNamara said at the news conference that the episode had shaken the community, which was already reeling from the fatal stabbing of an 18-year-old employee inside a Walmart on Sunday. A man was charged with murder in that killing.

Just last month, police celebrated a report showing that violent crimes dropped by 19 per cent in the city last year, though homicides were up from 2022.

On Wednesday, police said they had received calls for emergency assistance beginning around 1:15 pm. The suspect was in custody by 1:35 pm, authorities said.

Photos from a crime scene showed police tape blocking off large portions of a street in the residential neighborhood as fire and patrol vehicles arrived.

Vanessa Hy, a local resident, said she and her husband were watching television in their living room when she heard police outside their home shouting commands at the suspect, who was in her backyard.

“After about a minute or two, I looked out the side window,” Hy said in a phone interview. “They had the man. He was full of blood.”

The suspect appeared to resist officers as they put him into a squad car in front of her home, Hy added. She said that it was hard to tell if the blood that covered him was his own.

Hy said she was relieved that her two children were away on spring break.

“It was almost like a rampage,” she said. “I can’t logically put any of it together.”