- Credibility:
CHICAGO — A man has been charged with murder after five people were shot dead Saturday night in Dunning.
Krysztof Marek, 66, has been charged with five counts of first degree murder, police said in a Monday morning news release. He was scheduled to appear in Bond Court on Monday afternoon.
Marek was arrested Saturday after he shot and killed five people, police said: a 61-year-old man, a 65-year-old woman, a 53-year-old woman and another woman and another man.
The shooting happened about 5:30 p.m. Saturday, when officers were called to a condo building in the 6700 block of West Irving Park Road and found four people shot to death, police said. A fifth victim had been shot and was hospitalized in critical condition, but she later died.
Jakub Kuzmicki, the son of one of the victims, posted on Facebook, saying a neighbor had shot a family of four and then gunned down his mother. He said his mother had been critically wounded and there was a “slim chance of recovery.”
With his mother’s condition worsening, Kuzmicki and his father had to make “the decision that this is not the way my mother would want to live,” he wrote.
Donna Carrasquillo, a 52-year-old retired CTA bus driver who lives a couple blocks away, said she often ran into Marek, who she described as someone “with a chip on his shoulder.”
“I’d pass here with my grandchildren and he was always rude,” said Carrasquillo as she stood outside the apartment building on Monday. “He’d always be screaming, telling me that Mexicans are crazy and I told him I’m Puerto Rican and a U.S. citizen.”
Another woman who lives in the building next to Marek’s did not want to give her name because she may have to testify in court, but said she was watching television in her living room when the shooting occurred and at first thought it was construction noise.
“I heard boom, boom, boom, one after another. Then I looked out and saw someone asking if people were OK and heard crying. I saw a lady fall down the stairs, shot,” the woman said. Marek “walked in front of the building with a gun and two lady police officers arrested him. He didn’t try to run and hide.”
The woman said she had minor run-ins with Marek over the years but nothing in the last two years. Before that, she said Marek often gave her a hard time about snow removal.
“I’d shovel our walk and part of his building’s and he’d accuse me of piling snow on his side. He’d also put his garbage in our dumpster if he had large items,” the woman said. “I think he was the president of his condo board at one time but they removed him a couple years ago because no one could work with him. … It’s crazy, you never know your neighbors.”
One victim was identified as Jolanta Topolska, 53, in Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office records. Another victim was identified as Tsvetanka Kostadinova, though her age was not immediately available.
The names of other victims were not immediately available.
The gunman had a valid Firearm Owner’s Identification Card, according to the Chicago Tribune.
