Highland Park security said Robert E. Crimo III, 22, was taken into custody Monday night after a manhunt that lasted several hours.
Highland Park Police Chief Lou Jogman said the officer briefly pursued Crimo as he was driving about five miles north of the shooting site before the man stopped and was apprehended “without incident.”
Police declined to name Crimo as a suspect, calling the young man a “person of interest” in the case.
Authorities did not provide information on possible motives for the shooting.
Lake County Police spokesman Christopher Covelli said at a press conference that “several dead” died at the scene and one died in hospital.
Brigham Temple, director of emergency services at Northshore University Medical Center Hospital, which received 26 wounded in the shootout, said at least four of them were children as young as eight.
“It is devastating that the triumph of America has been destroyed by our exclusive American plague,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker told the conference.
“I’m furious because it shouldn’t be like this… while we celebrate July 4th only once a year, mass shootings have become a weekly—yes, weekly—American tradition,” he added.
US President Joe Biden was “shocked” by the shooting, reiterating that he would not “give up on fighting the epidemic of gun violence.”
