Tim Dunkin was relaxing, sitting outside his Garfield Park neighborhood home Thursday afternoon when he saw an SUV with its windows tinted suddenly get boxed in by three federal vehicles.
Within minutes, Dunkin heard at least 30 shots and saw FBI agents with riot shields and long guns navigating around the 3700 block of West Lexington Street, where they fatally shot Abdulhafedh H. Abdulhafedh, a 25-year-old man on parole for a bank robbery.
“I ain’t never seen nothing like that in my life,” Dunkin, 34, told the Sun-Times on Friday.
The hail of gunfire didn’t last long. When the shots stopped, Dunkin grabbed his cell phone and began taking videos of the aftermath.
The block where the shooting occurred remained cordoned off by red and yellow crime scene tape Friday morning, and at least five FBI agents were present.
Abdulhafedh was pronounced dead at the scene, which happened around 3 p.m. Thursday, according to the Chicago Fire Department, the FBI and the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Officials haven’t released details about what led to the shooting.
The shooting happened about a block from John Milton Gregory Elementary School, where some students and staff were outside when shots rang out shortly, according to a note sent to parents and guardians. The school went on lockdown until CPD confirmed the situation had ended.
“Please know that we are taking this incident extremely seriously,” Lateeya Toombs, principal at Gregory Elementary, said in the note. “I know situations like this can cause concern in our community; if your child voices any fears to you about what happened, please let us know so that we can give them extra support.”
One man who stopped by the shooting scene Thursday said he was the dead man’s half-brother, but the man declined to give his name, saying he feared retaliation.
He said his half-brother had told him he’d been pulled over by federal agents earlier in the week. His half-brother, he added, had FaceTimed another one of their siblings as soon as he was pulled over Thursday, and was still talking to that sibling when the gunfire started.
Abdulhafedh had been released on parole Jan. 8 after being convicted of robbery of a financial institution, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections website.
Abdulhafedh was sentenced to four years behind bars for the crime, which was prosecuted out of Will County, according to the site.
Contributing: Violet Miller