Letter from the editor: Authorities might be silent, but we still seek details

Early in the morning on Saturday, June 27, something dramatic happened at a house on Picton Road in Roselle. More than a month later, we still don't know much about what it was.

We know there was a shooting, that “multiple” people were injured and that one person died. We knew that much by the afternoon of the shooting. We published the basic information online then and on Page 3 of our Sunday, June 28, edition.

It would be several days before we would learn the identity of the person who was killed — and that in a roundabout way by asking the county coroner, who released it only after getting approval from the state's attorney.

Then, it would be nearly two weeks more — at that, after a critical Daily Herald editorial and a Cops & Crime column questioning the silence — before we would get some definitive word from police.

In a July 14 news release, they provided some substantial detail that pointed to a harrowing night.

The statement identified the victim, though it misspelled his first name, and said the case involved a party but that “few, if any, of the partygoers or victims” would tell them anything. It also reported that responding officers were “met with resistance” but did not fire any shots, and that more than 60 shots had been fired during the melee in which four were injured in addition to the man slain.

Up to now, no arrests have been made, as far as we know. Rumors and speculation have abounded on Facebook. Residents and concerned people frequently call us, sometimes asking why we were hiding what had happened, sometimes asking why police were.

I can't speak for the police. Investigating a crime like this is a complicated business, we know, and police often are understandably wary about creating problems by releasing too much. It's worth noting the Brown's Chicken case in Palatine was finally broken after nine years when a witness told an investigator details about the killing that had never been made public.

But all that, of course, still complicates our job of telling people, reliably, how an alarming, violent tragedy unfolded in their community, how well their police department responded to it — a line of reporting that is particularly of interest in today's post-George Floyd environment — or whether the community should respond — a question in this case that, because the case involves a home used for short-term rentals the village has limited control over, may yet result in a fall referendum in Roselle on the significant step of adopting home rule status.

These are important issues that reach well beyond mere human interest in the drama of a sensational event. They speak to how a community defines and manages itself, and how other communities may want to define and manage themselves.

So, we continue to pursue details. Reporter Susan Sarkauskas makes frequent contact with Roselle police and village authorities, as well as other major crimes investigators. And she has reached out to some people connected with people involved in the shooting, having no better luck than the Roselle police, And, she is preparing to appeal Roselle's rejection of our official request for more information in the case.

At some point, we hope to have something more substantial and more useful to report. But for now, we can only reiterate that, as the latest news release stated, Roselle police are steeped in the “complex and tedious” task of reconstructing the events of June 27 on Picton Road and striving both “to protect those victims in this case and bring those responsible to justice,”

We'll await word, patiently but intently. And we'll also continue to work on our own to learn and report what we can.