Man killed in Oakbrook Center shopping mall shooting identified

Police have identified the man who was killed in a shooting in the parking lot of Oakbrook Center shopping mall on Wednesday.

The victim was identified as 28-year-old Justin Hill, of Dolton. A woman also was wounded in the shooting, but survived, and police said an officer has been assigned to provide security at the hospital where she is being treated.

Oak Brook police said two men and one woman remained in custody on Thursday.

Police Chief Brian Strockis said the shooting happened shortly after noon on Wednesday in the parking lot outside the L.L. Bean store at the mall. 

Strockis said the shooting happened after five people in two vehicles met up in the parking lot and got into an altercation. One car stayed at the scene, but the people in another vehicle fled the parking lot, and were taken into custody in neighboring Oakbrook Terrace.

Investigators were able to use license plate reader cameras to help track down the car that fled the scene in a matter of minutes, according to Strockis.

Oak Brook leaders said their license plate reader technology has been so successful they are expanding their resources.

"I am told we have the highest density of license plate reading camera deployment of any town around," Village President Larry Herman said.

Herman estimated Oak Brook has 100-plus readers posted around the village, with a population of about 8,300 people. He believes their investments in security pay back in safety.

"In the last several years, I think a lot of the bad guys have come to realize Oak Brook is not a town to come mess with," he said.

Oak Brook also has adopted new technologies like the StarTrack dart system that marks suspects' cars with GPS trackers so police don't have to chase the vehicles to know where they are. The village also has started using drones to help provide officers with an eye in the sky before they arrive on the scene of a crime.

Neither of those technologies was deployed on Wednesday, but Herman said both have been used successfully in other cases.

Herman said they use multiple providers for license place technology – including Flock Safety – at a time when some people are debating Flock's surveillance technology because of repeated misuse by law enforcement officers.

"I don't personally understand why other communities would be choosing to give up this technology, as successful as it is. To those communities that are giving up their license plate reading cameras, I think what I would say to them is I'll send a truck over right away and pick them up. If you don't want them, we'll take them. They're that effective," he said.

Herman said Oak Brook is always looking at other technologies that could help their officers. He said many times the devices are less expensive than adding additional officers, which he said they do not need right now, because the department is fully staffed because of the support the village gives them.