After Willowbrook strip mall mass shooting, slain man’s family ‘trying to pick up the pieces’
Ashley Miller called it her “new normal.” It’s a future in which Reginald Meadows — the father of her two children, her junior high sweetheart and the man she planned to marry — is gone.
“I’m left trying to pick up the pieces,” she said through tears Wednesday, “trying to make sense of everything, trying to help my kids understand this confusion. This nonsense. Because Reginald, he wasn’t just a dad … he was a father.”
Three days after Meadows was killed in a mass shooting that injured at least 22 others during a Juneteenth celebration at a strip mall parking lot in DuPage County, his fiancee and family gathered at a Chicago law firm’s office to speak publicly about the 31-year-old who Miller called “our everything.”
DuPage County Sheriff James Mendrick’s office has said little about its ongoing investigation into the shooting, which happened about 12:30 a.m. along Illinois Route 83 near Willowbrook. No suspects were in custody Monday, the office previously said.
The family’s attorney, Robert Fakhouri, said his staff has started to piece together details of the shooting through interviews with witnesses and survivors. No lawsuit has been filed as yet, he said, while they continue to gather information about the event.
“There’s no doubt that justice in terms of criminal litigation is what the family is seeking, someone to be held responsible,” Fakhouri said. “In our world, in the civil context, there’s nothing that we can do to bring Reginald back, unfortunately, and there’s no amount of money in the world that will compensate for the family’s loss. But in the eyes of the law, the only way that we are able to compensate for those damages is monetarily. And that is for the benefit of his children.”
His office also shared surveillance footage from one of the strip mall stores. The roughly two-minute clip, which appears to have been posted to TikTok, starts with a large crowd in the parking lot. People are seen scattering or ducking for cover as several dozen gunshots are heard.
Residents nearby said the strip mall has been the site of similar celebrations in years past, and that sheriff’s deputies were there earlier in the night. Mendrick’s office previously said deputies were monitoring the gathering but left to respond to a 911 call about a fight when the shooting started.
Miller said she and Meadows hadn’t planned on going to the event. But with the strip mall next to their apartment complex, they decided to stop by.
“Reggie, he’s a social butterfly,” she said, sitting at a conference table with Fakhouri, Meadows’ brother, Darren Meadows, and father, Loranza Meadows.
They were there for maybe 10 minutes, she said, when the shooting started — three pops at first, and then gunfire that “lasted for what seemed like a lifetime.”
From her hiding spot, Miller said, she saw Meadows running.
“I know he was trying to make sure I was OK,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “But I was OK. I was OK already.”
About 820 miles away, in Phenix City, Alabama, Loranza Meadows was asleep in his bed when his wife, Marchele, woke him with the news his son was dead.
It was 3 a.m. on Father’s Day.
“I was in shock,” he remembered.
Darren Meadows called his younger brother “a wonderful man” who was in his first year coaching his son’s baseball team. He overcame the loss of his mother from cancer about a decade ago and planned to get his commercial driver’s license and buy a truck.
“His aim was always for the sky,” he said, “especially for his children.”
A GoFundMe has been established for Meadows’ funeral and his children.
“My nieces and nephews are traumatized forever,” Darren Meadows said. “My son. My daughter. Traumatized forever. The whole family is traumatized. We really need help for them, not just financially, but pray for them. Keep them in your hearts.”
