Prosecutors say a shootout resulted in 20 shots being fired and one of the gunmen, who was armed with a machine gun and a second gun, being shot multiple times in North Chicago.
The North Chicago Police Department and Lake County Major Crime Task Force responded around 3:18 a.m. on October 4 to the 1400 block of Mulberry Avenue in North Chicago for a report of shots fired.
Police officials said officers arrived and found an 18-year-old man who had been shot multiple times.
He was transported by ambulance to Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville with non-life-threatening injuries.
Lake County Assistant State’s Attorney Emily Shanley-Roberts said multiple 911 callers reported that there were approximately 15 shots fired in the area.
Officers found the then-18-year-old wounded and lying outside of a residence in the 1400 block of Cypress Avenue.
The man, identified as Keyon Cooks, 19, of Midlothian, told police while in the hospital that he had been walking home from another residence on Mulberry Boulevard when he heard someone say, “I got you now,” and then he was shot, Shanley-Roberts said.
Evidence from the shooting was spread over a two-block distance on the street and between the townhomes.
There were approximately 20 fired shell casings, several locations with blood splatter and gunfire damage to multiple exterior walls of residences.
A resident in the 1400 block of Cypress Avenue reported that her home had been struck.
Shanley-Roberts said officers observed a projectile had penetrated through multiple walls in the residence, starting from the east alley wall, through the kitchen, through the bathroom walls and ending at the entrance wall.
Officers found two guns near where Cooks had been found. They were placed near a pillar between two townhomes.
One gun had a red liquid, believed to be blood, on it. The two guns were a Glock 21 with a laser attachment and a second Glock with an auto-sear, also known as a “switch,” attached to it, Shanley-Roberts said.
The auto-sear device renders the gun fully automatic. Both guns were swabbed for DNA.
The crime lab determined that swabs taken from both guns had a “very strong support inclusion” of Cooks’ DNA, Shanley-Roberts said.
“There is no reason to have an auto-sear on a semiautomatic gun except if the possessor of that gun intends to convert it into a fully automatic weapon,” Shanley-Roberts said.
Shanley-Roberts said the Glock 21 had been fired and at least seven casings found at the scene were confirmed to have been fired from Cooks’ gun.
An arrest warrant was obtained for Cooks in February charging him with possession of a machine gun and eight counts of aggravated unlawful possession of a weapon.
Cooks was taken into custody on the warrant last month and the Lake County State’s Attorney’s Office filed a petition to detain him pending trial.
“This defendant was not authorized to have a firearm at all. He not only possessed two, but he had one with a machine gun conversion switch, carried both loaded out in the open, and shot one at least seven times in a residential neighborhood,” Shanley-Roberts said.
Lake County Judge Michael Nerheim granted the petition and ordered Cooks remanded to the custody of the Lake County Jail.
After the shooting occurred in October but before he was charged, Cooks was arrested in Chicago and charged with aggravated unlawful use of a weapon on January 13, 2025.
Prosecutors said officers spotted Cooks wearing a ski mask and asked him if he was armed with a firearm, leading to him running away and pulling out a gun during the foot chase.
Cooks ditched the firearm but was later taken into custody, only to be released from Cook County after a judge denied a petition to detain filed by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. Cooks then failed to appear in court at his next court hearing.
Cooks remains held in the Lake County Jail and is scheduled to appear in court again on August 7 for a preliminary hearing in his Lake County case.