Five adults are dead after an apparent murder-suicide in Mundelein, Illinois — a suburban Chicago village where crime sits 63% below the national average — and no gun law on the books stopped it.
Police found the bodies of three men and two women scattered across multiple rooms of a home late October 18 after a relative called from roughly 2,000 miles away in California, unable to reach one of the victims. Officers entered through an unlocked door. All five had been shot at close range with a handgun. Two handguns were recovered at the scene.
Four of the dead were family members, and the suspected shooter is believed to have been in a domestic relationship with one of them, according to Mundelein police. The home is owned by retired veterinarians Rebecca Schmidt, 77, and James Schmidt, 80, and their son Bryan Schmidt, 51, who also ran their now-closed cat clinic, the New York Post reported, citing NBC5. Neighbors feared the elderly couple and two relatives were among the dead.
Illinois imposes some of the strictest gun controls in the nation — a Firearms Owners Identification card, waiting periods, bans on so-called assault weapons. None of it prevented five people from being gunned down in a quiet living room. The laws disarm the law-abiding. They don't disarm evil.
Mundelein Deputy Police Chief Rick Wilfenger said the preliminary investigation points to an isolated incident with no ongoing threat to the public. A motive has not been released. Autopsies are pending from the Lake County Coroner's Office, and the Major Crimes Task Force is assisting.
Neighbors told WLS they assumed the gunshots were firecrackers ahead of the Bears-Falcons game. "She was a spry, retired veterinarian," one neighbor said of Rebecca Schmidt. "She was a friendly person. She'd wave to people."
USA TODAY's coverage stuck to the bare procedural facts — time, body count, welfare check. The Post filled in the human picture: the homeowners' identities, the shuttered clinic, the gray Volkswagen Jetta sealed off in a neighboring funeral parlor parking lot. Neither outlet pressed the obvious question of how Illinois's gun regime failed so completely, or whether any regulation short of confiscation could have changed the outcome.
The identities of the dead and the official causes of death remain pending. Anyone with information is asked to call Mundelein police at 847-968-4600.
Five people dead in a town named after a man of peace, in a state that trusts its citizens with guns about as little as any in the union. The laws were all there. The killer didn't care.
