Authorities expect to file charges against the suspect who fatally shot a mother and her three daughters Sunday in suburban Tinley Park, in what the police chief said is the deadliest attack in the suburb since the Lane Bryant killings of 2008.
Tinley Park Police Chief Tom Tilton, speaking to reporters late Monday morning, said he would not share any details about the case until charges are filed.
“We’re in the middle of a very complex investigation,” Tilton said. “We expect to have a firm decision later on in the afternoon or further in the week, and we don’t want to say anything that will prejudice this.”
Officers responded about 11:20 a.m. Sunday to a home in the 7400 block of 173rd Place after a man called 911 to report a person shot, authorities have said.
A recording of a dispatcher’s call indicates that a husband called 911 to say his wife had been shot.
“We’re getting a call from a male subject that his wife was shot,” the dispatcher says in the recording. “The line disconnected. He wasn’t really cooperative. We have police en route as well.”
Tilton said police responded quickly, arriving three minutes and thirty seconds after the call was dispatched, and arrested the suspect a minute and twenty seconds after that. A weapon was recovered, he said.
Inside the home, police found three women in their 20s and their mother found fatally shot inside the home and pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
They were identified as Majeda Kassem, 53; Halema Kassem, 25; Hanan Kassem, 24; and Zahia Kassem, 25.
Tilton on Monday would not say if the 911 caller was the same person who was arrested. He declined to say if the suspect was the woman’s husband and the daughter’s father, but did not deny that police have classified it as “domestic” violence.
“We have a suspect in custody and that’s all I can really say,” Tilton said.
The police chief said the suburb — of 55,000 people about 30 miles southwest from Chicago’s Loop — hasn’t seen a crime this bad in over a decade.
“We haven’t had any crimes like this in Tinley Park in forever, really. The last large event like this would have been Lane Bryant in 2008 (when five people were killed),” Tilton said. “We had a homicide a year or so ago. But of this scale? Not since Lane Bryant,” he said.
Tinley Park Mayor Michael Glotz said, “This is a difficult day and a stark reminder of how quickly domestic violence can escalate.”
A neighbor of the family said her daughter knew the family well, and that at least five people lived at the home
“She always talked about how they were all very intelligent and had very high goals in life, like being a pharmacist and a doctor,” Charlotte Vaitkus told reporters Sunday evening. “They had a bright future.”
Itedal Shalabi, cofounder and executive director of Arab American Family Services, said the family is of Palestinian decent and Muslim, but that religion did not have to do with the shooting.
“At this point, this has nothing to do with Islam or any other religion. This is about power and control. This is about gender-based violence,” Shalabi told reporters Monday.
“This is a tragedy. This is a tragedy for any community,” Shalabi said. “But this is a tragedy for a community that doesn’t talk about domestic violence as much as we need to, and to address it as much as we should. And so we are hoping that we can prevent other incidents from happening if the community also reaches out and starts asking for help.”
Pam Koseki, executive director of the Crisis Center of South Suburbia, said there’s a 500% greater chance of someone dying in a home situation involving domestic violence.