Tim Dunkin was relaxing, sitting outside his Garfield Park neighborhood home Thursday afternoon when he saw an SUV with tinted windows suddenly get boxed in by three federal vehicles.
Dunkin then heard at least 30 gunshots and saw FBI agents with riot shields and guns in the 3700 block of West Lexington Street, where Abdulhafedh H. Abdulhafedh was fatally shot. Abdulhafedh, 25, was on parole for 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 cellphone and started 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 investigating.
Abdulhafedh was pronounced dead at the scene 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.
It happened about a block from John Milton Gregory Elementary School, where some students and staff were outside when shots rang out, according to a note sent to parents and guardians Thursday. The school was placed on lockdown.
“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.”
A 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.
At the time of the shooting, Abdulhafedh was on pretrial release and wanted on a warrant out of DuPage County.
Over the past five years, Abdulhafedh had been arrested for robbery, burglary and being in possession of stolen cars, court records show.
In 2023, Abdulhafedh pleaded guilty to attempting to rob a bank in New Lenox, according to Will County court records and media reports. He was sentenced to four years in prison.
Around that same time, Abdulhafedh also pleaded guilty to burglary in DuPage County and possessing a stolen vehicle in Cook County.
Then in January, he was released on parole, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections.
About two months later, he was arrested for possessing a stolen Honda CR-V and fleeing police across multiple suburbs. A DuPage County judge ordered him released pending trial, but then he appeared to miss court. A warrant was issued for his arrest in April, records show.
Contributing: Violet Miller, Sophie Sherry