As he ranted about his religious beliefs, a 32-year-old Wisconsin man went room to room with a 9mm pistol early Wednesday -- killing his pregnant teenage wife, his baby son and two nieces in a brick home on the Southwest Side, according to his family and Chicago Police. Wounded in the rampage were the suspect's mother and a teenage nephew, police and family said. A 12-year-old girl in the house managed to escape and ran to a gas station, where she called 911. The gunman shot at her as she fled but missed, police said.
About an hour and a half after the horrific 4:25 a.m. shooting in the 7200 block of South Mozart, officers were taking witnesses to a police station when they spotted the bearded, 6-foot-5-inch suspect walking near 59th and Racine, police said.
They arrested the man without a fight, and he led them to a vacant lot where he had tossed the suspected murder weapon, police said. He told them "Allah" told him to kill his family, sources said. And he added: "Too bad I ran out of bullets."
The man's family members and court records paint a troubled portrait of the suspect. He was born in Chicago but lived in Madison, Wis., where he has amassed a long rap sheet.
Last year, he was arrested for battery after pushing Twanda Thompson against a van in a Wal-Mart parking lot on Sept. 25 in Madison. They were arguing over whether she should take the baby into the store or he should wait with the child, records show. Witnesses told police that he yelled, "What would you do if your woman was acting like this?" The man entered a no-contest plea, went to jail for 45 days and was freed on Feb. 22.
Weeks later, on March 19, he married Twanda Thompson, records show. And on April 6, she won a paternity case filed last year. A court determined he was the father of her 7-month-old child, Jihad, whose name is an Arab word meaning struggle or holy war.
The suspect's family was perplexed by the killings. "How do you shoot your mom and then your wife and kids?" said a sister, Letisha Larry. "That's crazy. And your niece and nephew? Why do you do that? You're just a killer."
She said her brother became a Muslim while in federal prison. In the last week, he began making ominous remarks. "He was saying weird stuff, how he was an angel and we were demons, we were demons in the house," she said.
He carried the Quran and said something in the Muslim holy book instructed him to kill someone, his sister said.
On Tuesday, the suspect traveled to Chicago from Madison with his wife, son and mother, said Letisha Larry, who was not in the house at the time of the shootings. During the killings, he was uttering "Muslim stuff," she said.
One of the suspect's neighbors in Wisconsin, Andrea Richardson, knew Twanda Thompson from Chicago. Their children played together in Madison, she said. "He was so controlling and he was into that Muslim thing," she said. "He wanted her to wear a head scarf, but she wasn't hearing it. You'd hear them arguing and fighting through the walls. . . . It was screaming and then, 'boom, boom, boom.' "