A violent brawl at Chicago O’Hare’s Terminal 2 escalated into a shootout around 12:54 a.m. Wednesday morning, leaving a 25‑year‑old man wounded and disrupting airport operations for several hours.
The fight started at baggage claim and spilled out onto the street. Heated words escalated to violent blows, one assailant grabbed a weapon from their car and returned to open fire before returning to the vehicle.
One onlooker described “rapid fire—much like automatic gunfire” followed by a more than half a dozen individual shots as people scattered in all directions. Investigators found dozens of shell casings scattered around the area, perhaps as many as 57 bullet casings recovered by authorities.
Law enforcement locked down Terminal 2’s lower level arrivals area for several hours, disrupting traffic for about four hours. No arrests have been made. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson blamed availability of illegal firearms.
Some readers will consider this a dog bites man story, it’s gun violence in Chicago, but that doesn’t usually happen at the airport.
Not at all surprising, given America’s love affair with firearms and personal ownership of them. It’s a violent country. Always has been.
Hard to believe one could fire a weapon 57 times at a large airport and only wound one person, even at that late hour.
Zoiks, I just flew into ORD this Tuesday (as I do every month) !!! Not surprised to hear it was Terminal 2, Terminals 1 (United), 3 (primarily American) and 5 (International) are nice, excepting Concourse L in Terminal 3. In essence, Terminal 2 and Concourse L of Terminal 3 are the ghetto areas of ORD, low ceilings with dirty ceiling tiles and dated furnishings. Armed police would obviously make a difference in Baggage Claim, hate to see that it may has come to that.
From AI: Terminal 2 primarily serves United Express, some United flights, Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, and JetBlue.
I have successfully routed myself away from flying through ORD for many years.
Not surprised because ORD baggage claim is the worst. Overcrowded, multiple flights on the same carrousel and always late without any reasonable explanation. Tempers get hot.
@Gary: you knew this wasn’t really about flights yet your Texas self couldn’t pass up the chance to rile your racist base. I applaud you, you achieved your goal.
@ J — GFY.
@Ray Gary didn’t mention race at all. In the immortal words of Shakespeare I believe “thou doth protest too much”. You can always choose to not read Gary’s posts if you’re afraid you’ll see things that aren’t there.
I can’t remember the last time there was a brawl at O’Hare, let alone gun shots. Good job by CPD. My Uber arrived at Terminal 3 around 7:30 that morning, and by that time everything was normal.
For a premium travel experience that engages the elevated experiences of an elite hub, please consider Delta and ATL, SLC, or MSP.
And for the ignorant “KL” (afraid to post your full name, sport?) Somewhere north of 95 percent of mass shooters are white males. Go down the list sometime, and enlighten us with your theory of how their parenting caused them to slaughter innocent people.
Yikes. Relieved no fatalities. Rather no violence at all but much much prefer people use Caution Wet Signs than guns if it comes to that.
@Matt You’re going to make @1990s day!
And this is why I never check bags.
This is sad and upsetting. Violence and crime is bad wherever it happens and by whomever commits it, regardless of their background or identity.
I’m with @LadyOlives, too many guns here.
@KL — You are what I would call a ‘proud racist’–no attempt at masking it. At least now we know to expect that from you. Will you use different names on here next time?
Unrelated, but where’s @Andy S these days?
@AngryFlier @J — Ah, the subtle, thinly-veiled racists. So, ‘13%’ and ‘15%’ is ‘code’ for black people? Not cool. AngryFlier, you post on here regularly, so at least now we know about you, too.
@Basil — You know exactly what @Ray was referring to. It was the three commenters I mentioned above and others like them, who Gary had to reasonably know a post like this would inspire. Unfortunately, an incident like this is inherently ‘red meat’ for haters and bigots–alas, it deals with an airport, so it is relevant to the community/industry. I remain grateful that Gary actually supports free speech, and so do I, even if I disagree passionately, as I do with KL, J, and AngryFlier here. So, each of us can choose to engage or ignore. Gary hopefully will not micromanage or ‘mute’ anyone, even those others (like OneTrippe) have repeatedly requested that in the past. As for me, I prefer to troll the trolls. You do you.
@Matt — Thank you for your service. As always, Keep Climbing!
@L737 — Indeed, Matt made my day.
@ Gary — Glad to see “J”s racist remarks removed…
Fly the Friendly Skies…
@1990: And we know what to think of you as well. Which flag is hanging in front of your commune this week; Ukraine? Or Palestine/Hamas?
And you probably hate statistics as much as a lib like you hates anyone else from the side of reality.
Fifty-seven shots fired and only one injury.
Trump would be jealous!!!
@1990 – come and take them. You personally. We’ll wait.
They were just welcoming passengers to Chi-raq.
Noticing a shift in culture, then ignoring it by claiming it would be racist to see it, isn’t working too well.
Thirty years ago, was this similarly common? No. Is that something to be ignored? You’re OK with it?
Culture is shifting. What is the cause of the culture shift?
The airport area is full of security cameras, and they haven’t yet caught all involved in the shootings?
And where did Spirit recently move to? Oh, that’s right, Terminal 2.
@Angry Flier
@Fred
For a couple of treasonous, draft-dodging cowards, you keyboard warriors sure talk a lot of orange shit. But as typical morons, you offer nothing in the way of solutions while you denigrate 1990.
Why don’t you give your pea brains a break and STFU. Maybe you can atttend a board meeting in your trailer park.
Helldoge – shouldn’t you get back to sucking on your daddies stump?
“Hard to believe one could fire a weapon 57 times at a large airport and only wound one person, even at that late hour.”
The shooter(s) must have been Imperial Stormtroopers, lol
Breed is right. These dern guns seem to have a mind of their own. They even tempt the human mind to do evil…
@ Bill Dwyer If we counted the constant mass shootings all week in African American neighborhoods it would be 99% of mass shootings are by black males. But Liberals don’t care about the black neighborhoods and black Americans being terrorized on a daily basis.
Gary, you can moderate however you wish–if I overstep, feel free to take my stuff down, too. I respect that this is your website, and you can run it however you wish. That said, I will address the fellow commentors.
@AngryFlier — Fellow citizen, please do fly whichever flags you would like, and I’ll even defend your right to freely express yourself as such, however different or offensive your expression may seem to me, subjectively, so long as it is not an incitement of imminent illegal action, which is unlikely in an online forum, unless you are attempting to dox or harm me or anyone else here.
@Fred — Ah, a thinly-veiled threat of violence, but thankfully not an imminent or specific one. Nice. I’m just here to point that tactic out to the others. Sir, please know that decent, law-abiding citizens still outnumber the hate-filled bigots who seek to harm others. And I very much do support the 2nd Amendment. In fact, I’m a big fan of the entire US Constitution. All of it. I can also think that there may be too many guns out there. Those are not inconsistent positions.
@K Helldoge — Thanks for the support. Know this, if you upset some folks, you will absolutely get them to call you silly names (like ‘dumb,’ ‘ignorant,’ ‘uneducated,’ would be on the tame side), and in my book, if you get them to that point, where they won’t address any substance, just hate, then fella, you’ve won. Then again, winning on the internet is like the ‘points’ in the gameshow ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway?’ As Drew would say, “The show where everything is made up and the points don’t matter! That’s right, the points are just like… a suggestion box at Tiananmen Square.”
No worries, it’s the ‘American way’ (not the airline) !
@Larry Johnson: Liberal here (the classical kind). I promise we’re not all like that. A lot of us are waking up, especially these last 4-5 years…
@Britt — Nice attempt at subtly and feigning ignorance, but your use of the phrase ‘changing culture,’ you’re not fooling me. Racial prejudice is defined as “the belief in the inherent inferiority of non-White racial groups, particularly Black individuals, accompanied by support for segregation and discrimination.” A few others here expressed their racial animus towards the identity group of the alleged perpetrators. For some, even the mention of the city ‘Chicago’ is code for ‘black,’ and they absolutely mean it with negative connotation. Again, folks can say whatever they want, but even suggestive hate speech can be harmful. I’ll call it out when I see it.
@Justin — I take it that you were joking, and you’re welcome to do so, I like banter, too, but senseless violence is a big problem, whether in the USA or overseas. I bet that you did not actually watch Spike Lee’s film with the same phrase, but the concept of Chi-Raq, a about sex strike to motivate gangs members to put down their guns—was inspired by a similar instance in Liberia, where such a strike is credited with ending a horrible civil war there. Again, joke as much as you wish, and also know that there are real stories and tragedies behind your references.
@Ray Windsor — Those who commit crimes with weapons of any kind are indeed ‘not good,’ regardless of their background or weapon of choice. The reality is that less guns usually results in less deaths. In this case, the perpetrators should be charged and afforded due process. We have a justice system—it’s not perfect, but it’s the best we got.
@Chris W. — No one wants senseless violence, regardless of supposed political ideologies. You have little to gain by pandering to @Larry Johnson and his vile suggestions. If either of you seriously wanted to invest in these communities, then please do so, but neither of you are actually sympathetic to that cause.