In the wake of rooftop standoff on West Side, more questions than answers remain
Thank you for supporting our journalism. This article is available exclusively for our subscribers, who help fund our work at the Chicago Tribune.A man with a potential flamethrower stands atop a building in the 4100 block of West Chicago Avenue on June 2, 2023, which prompted a response from ATF and Chicago's SWAT.
Using a drone camera, a Tribune journalist captured photos that showed debris — tables, chairs, patio tents — strewn across the roof of 4140 W. Chicago Ave. Also visible were five flags, including an American flag hung upside down, as well as a yellow poster board, roughly 3-feet by 3-feet in size, emblazoned with a red swastika.
“This is not safe,” Farrah Walker, secretary of the West Humboldt Park Community Coalition, said before the final incident. “People are outraged. People are shocked. People are scared.” “We didn’t keep in touch but we didn’t have anger towards each other or anything like that. We just didn’t keep in touch,” Lichard said. “Things just went a little south when my ma died and things just, you know…we just kind of, like, went our own way.”
Friday, June 2, was graduation day at Orr Academy High School, the West Side campus that sits one block southeast of the building on Chicago Avenue where Litsiardakis assumed his perch. The ceremony was set to start at 10 a.m., less than an hour after the SWAT situation began. “He is not engaging with anybody, I don’t think, personally but over the loudspeaker he is saying, you know, racial things, something I won’t repeat. But they are worried,” he added. “I was speaking to one of the workers in the school and they said he has weapons and grenades, and I’m like, ‘How was he able to get it? [Did he] Amazon it? How did he get it?’”
Though Chicago Avenue was closed off, several side streets near the building remained open as negotiators sought to coax out Litsiardakis. In the 800 block of North Kedvale Avenue, a well-kept block filled with bungalows and two-flats guarded by wrought iron fences, about a dozen residents used the situation as a social opportunity.
The CPD held a press conference the following Monday. Larry Snelling, chief of the bureau of counterterrorism, said it wasn’t yet clear how many weapons Litsiardakis had access to. The building he was in, Snelling added, would likely need to be demolished.
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