This is Part 1 of a series about gun violence in Bloomington-Normal. Coming Wednesday: A closer look at juvenile gun crime and how it can be interrupted.
Gunshots rang out at a youth football game in Normal. Bullets pierced the windows of a Starbucks across the street from State Farm’s headquarters in broad daylight. A fight led to a shooting inside Illinois State University’s Bone Student Center. All in the past eight months.
Gun violence is seeping more into everyday life in Bloomington-Normal, including spaces once thought of as safe. Shooting incidents jumped 43% in 2024, and gun seizures by law enforcement were up 18%, according to Bloomington and Normal police departments. Eight people were injured, and two were killed.
One big driver is juveniles. Police and prosecutors say they’ve seen a concerning increase in juvenile incidents involving guns. That includes shots-fired incidents that can be traumatizing for a neighborhood even if no one is injured or killed.
“We take that as serious as any other gun crime, because we know those guns truly affect life and community,” said Bloomington Police Chief Jamal Simington. “So however we can engage the investigative process diligently, to follow all investigative leads that come in, that's important to us.”
To be clear, Bloomington-Normal is statistically safer than many other Illinois cities, including for gun violence. Peoria, Sangamon, Champaign and Macon counties all had over 50 firearm injuries each in 2024, according to a state database. McLean County had 15.
Perceptions of safety don’t always match reality. A shooting at your local Starbucks, your kid’s football game, or your ISU student event is jarring, even if it’s an outlier. Local police say they want to keep people informed – like with Facebook posts about shots-fired incidents – but they’re also aware that can lead people to the wrong conclusion.
One example: The triple murder-suicide on Lee Street in February was the first gun-related homicide in Bloomington in 34 months.
“People are bombarded with the information so frequently that they think, ‘Oh my gosh, the city is going downhill,’” said Normal Police spokesperson Officer Brad Park. “But if you look at the numbers, it's kind of level here and there and maybe a spike every now and again. But obviously, the goal is to make the community the safest it can be.”
Gun violence is one area we’re struggling, with more people directly impacted – even elected officials.
Bloomington City Council member Mollie Ward's home was struck by stray gunfire in August 2024 in an incident that injured a 21-year-old man. Two teenagers, ages 17 and 18, were charged in that case.
New Bloomington Mayor Dan Brady said there was a shooting on his family’s street in east Bloomington about two years ago.
“It was an eye-opener to me, where a woman squeezed off eight rounds, hit homes, [and] almost hit a woman in her driveway,” Brady said.
He said he became a “neighborhood advocate” on public safety after that. As a mayoral candidate, Brady pledged to get “the guns and the drugs off the streets” and he won the endorsement of the Bloomington Police officers’ union. One idea he's shared for doing that: bringing back Bloomington Police’s vice unit, which was disbanded years ago.
The City of Bloomington’s Special Commission for Safe Communities, championed by Mollie Ward, has been analyzing gun violence and is expected to bring a report to the city council in August or September, one member told WGLT.
What we’re seeing
Twin City police stress that our recent shooting incidents have generally not targeted people at random.
“Obviously, nobody should be targeted at all, but what we’re seeing in our intel is that it’s usually people shooting at a specific person,” said Park. “Obviously, there could be collateral injuries for a situation like that, but that’s what we’re seeing.”
In Bloomington, some of the 37 shots-fired incidents last year weren’t even gunfire aimed at a person.
“They were just recklessly firing into street signs, trees, light poles, that type of thing,” said Officer Bryce Janssen, a spokesperson for Bloomington Police.
Juveniles with guns are behind some of these incidents, and others involving injuries. Bloomington saw an over 200% increase in juvenile arrests involving guns in 2024, Simington said. The number of juvenile court cases involving guns more than tripled, from four in 2023 to 14 in 2024, according to Circuit Clerk Don Everhart. The average age for a gun offender in Bloomington was 19 years old, Simington said.
And one gun can cause multiple problems. Around 40% of guns recently recovered by BPD after a crime have been used locally in another shots-fired incident, said Janssen.
“The firearms are trading hands frequently,” Janssen said.
That makes guns a commodity.
“It does appear that the youth are more focused on acquiring firearms than they were historically,” said McLean County State’s Attorney Erika Reynolds.
Social media can be a place to show off what you've got.
“You might catch somebody in the area of a shooting, and further investigation leads to a download of what’s on their phone which might reveal – two days ago, they had a picture of themselves holding a gun. They sent it to somebody who was threatening them. That does happen frequently where, if a youth has a gun, a lot of times they will brag about it and show it off,” Janssen said.
According to McLean County Sheriff Matt Lane, tracing guns used in multiple crimes or by multiple perpetrators “makes everything more difficult.” So does social media.
“There’s no way to track everyone’s social media to know these things,” he said. “I don’t know of a way to do that. It would be like herding cats. I don’t think it’s possible at this point.”
In Normal there were 26 shots-fired incidents last year – almost double 2023’s tally. There have been five more so far in 2025, including the unsolved Bone Student Center case. Park with NPD said it's normal for the data to ebb and flow year to year.
NPD has seen several high-profile shootings involving suspects from out of town. A 37-year-old Springfield man who, because of a prior conviction, was not legally able to have a gun is accused of opening fire at the youth football game in September. A 19-year-old from Chicago is accused of the fatal shooting of a young man near the ISU campus in September. (The shooting at Starbucks in Bloomington remains unsolved.)
“We're not in a bubble, so people definitely come in,” Park said.
How authorities are responding
BPD stressed that it investigates every shots-fired call as deeply as they can. The department recently expanded its access to National Integrated Ballistic Information Network [NIBIN], which has accelerated its investigative work related to gun crime.
“A lot of agencies across the country might just write it up, document the incident, be done with it. But locally, we will pursue that until the leads run dry, and that can lead to social media images and, eventually, getting search warrants and locating a gun later on,” Janssen said.
Reynolds, the prosecutor, said “we treat a shots-fired incident with no injuries just as seriously as a shots-fired incident with injuries.” She said they’re also seeing more juveniles who are repeat offenders and engaging in higher levels of violence with handguns – leading to more requests to transfer juvenile cases to adult court.
“Every time a person makes the decision to fire a bullet in the residential areas of this community, they are creating countless potential victims. Once the bullet leaves the barrel of the gun, everyone in its path is a potential victim,” Reynolds said.
NPD and BPD are also seizing more guns – 104 last year, and another 13 to start this year.
“There is a high demand for weapons being illegally possessed by members of our community,” Simington said. “The more guns we seize that are illegally possessed, that translates into lives saved. Period.”
Community engagement is another priority, including the School Resource Officer [SRO] program that puts armed officers inside every public junior high and high school in the Twin Cities. Both Normal and Bloomington police also run summer youth outreach programs.
Community response
Police can only do so much on their own.
Police stressed that they want you to call them if you see or hear an incident that could become violent – and certainly if you hear shots fired. Simington said BPD has even received anonymous tips from parents and others about a young person having a gun they shouldn’t.
“We are very fortunate in Bloomington-Normal where people call the police when something happens. A lot of communities are not like that,” Janssen said.
And to not make the problem worse, Janssen encouraged legal gun owners to securely store their firearms. A lot of gun thefts occur when weapons are left unsecured in a vehicle.
“Obviously it's not your fault that you are now the victim of a theft and somebody stole your property, but that does help us out as well, as far as limiting the unauthorized access to firearms for those individuals that have no business having them,” Janssen said.
That’s even more important as summer nears. It’s common for crime to rise.
“The issues with these juveniles is they’re very much more active when it's nicer weather out, when you know the sun’s up a little bit later, just being out and about doing those things,” Park said. “I'd love to give you a perfect answer to how we can stop these [shootings]. That's obviously the main goal. But it is difficult.”
