An Illinois middle school was placed on lockdown after police happened to be nearby when they heard about 20 shots ring out. Once police arrived, they saw a man firing a rifle into a vehicle. Three people were shot dead, and the relationship between them has the suburban community devastated.
Suggested Reading
Around 4:00 p.m. on Tuesday (Sept. 16), police officers from Berwyn, a Chicago suburb, heard gunfire near Lincoln Middle School on 16th St. As they approached, police said the man opened fire on them, so they ran for cover and didn’t return fire.
Eventually the shooter, identified as 54-year-old Steven Lee who drove up to his wife’s job, shot himself in the head, but not before taking the life of his own wife and her elderly mother outside of the school in broad daylight. Horrific video shows blood on the sidewalk next to two vehicles parked in the middle of the road.
His wife was Nerissa Lee, who was Lincoln Middle School’s beloved assistant principal. Nerissa, 46, was found dead in the targeted vehicle and her mother, 76, was also killed in the horrifying murder-suicide. The Cook County Medical Examiner hasn’t released the mother’s name.
Nerissa’s sister, Shana Everage, told NBC 5 Chicago that the fatal domestic incident was “the boiling point” that just “didn’t come out of the blue.”
“It had started ever since I want to say the tail end of June and basically the boiling point would have been yesterday,” she said. “They my family, I mean it’s a horrible thing, you know I have a lot of emotions. I don’t quite know what to feel.”
Folks from the community described Nerissa as a well-liked teacher before she became an administrator, CBS News reported. One student said she would see students off at the end of the school day.
Former student, Hailey Bedoy, 16, told the Chicago Sun-Times the assistant principal had a personality that “a lot of teachers don’t have now.” Bedoy said she “always had a bubbly personality” and “was very invested in her students.” Bedoy added: “She accomplished a lot, she lived her life and she was a really great human being.”
Classes resumed on Thursday and counselors were available for students and staff.
Berwyn, located about 10 miles west of the Windy City, was ranked as the 33rd safest mid-size city in America in a study by Safewise, a national security review platform, in 2024.
Straight From 
Sign up for our free daily newsletter.