Joliet mass murder suspect Romeo Nance is believed to have killed all eight of his victims — two of them teenage girls — on Sunday, the day before police discovered seven of them at a grisly crime and Nance wound up killing himself while on the run.
Those were among the few details that police shed on the rampage in the Joliet area that left two girls, three women and three men dead, and another man wounded — before the suspect died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in Texas.
Police did not discuss any possible motive for the massacre.
“This incident has had a tremendous impact on the city of Joliet,” Joliet Police Chief Bill Evans said during a news briefing Tuesday. “It’s had a tremendous impact on my agency both mentally and physically.”
Investigators believe Nance, 23, fatally shot seven individuals — the “majority” of them relatives of his — in two homes in the 2200 block of West Acres Road before committing two “random” shootings in the area and fleeing Will County, Evans said.
Officers first discovered the bodies in the homes on Monday, but Investigators now believe they were shot Sunday afternoon, Evans said.
Five people were found in one of the homes: two girls ages 14 and 16, and two women ages 20 and 38. A 38-year-old man was also found there.
Across the street, a 47-year-old woman and a 35-year-old man were found in the other home, Evans said.
Romeo Nance and the Toyota Camry police say he was driving.
Will County sheriff’s office, Joliet police
On Monday, Evans told reporters, “I’ve been a policeman for 29 years; this is probably the worst crime scene I’ve ever been associated with.”
Nance was related to a “majority” of the residents of both houses but investigators are still working to establish their exact relationships, Evans said on Tuesday.
Nance then shot two men, one of the fatally, before fleeing the area on Sunday, Evans said.
Deputies were called about 4:30 p.m. Sunday to the Pheasant Run Apartments in unincorporated Joliet Township and found a man identified as Toyosi Bakare, 28, with a gunshot wound to his head, Dan Jungles, the deputy chief of the Will County Sheriff’s Office, said.
Bakare was taken to St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Joliet, where he died, the Will County coroner’s office said.
Jungles said robbery didn’t appear to be a motive in that shooting. Bakare had gone out to buy some cigarettes at a gas station, he said.
The other shooting happened about 10 minutes earlier in Joliet, Jungles said. A 42-year-old man was found shot in his leg in the 200 block of Davis Street. His injuries were not considered to be life-threatening.
Evans said there didn’t appear to be a connection between the shootings in the two homes and the later shootings on Sunday.
“In many cases like this, we may never know the truth or the motives behind the senseless killings,” Jungles said.
Authorities identified a red Toyota Camry that was known to be used by Nance as being connected to the shootings, Jungles said. When deputies couldn’t locate the vehicle, they set up surveillance Sunday night on the 2200 block of West Acres, where the vehicles’ registered owner lived.
After releasing the vehicle description to the public, deputies visited the registered owner’s home but didn’t get a response. They then visited a home across the street that investigators knew Nance often occupied and noticed blood on the front door and “fresh” gunshot markings.
Deputies made their way inside the home and located two bodies. A team of law enforcement officials then entered the other home and found five more bodies, Jungles said.