The search for a suspect and a person-of-interest in the fatal shootings of a Romeoville family came to a fiery end on Wednesday when both individuals died following a crash on an Oklahoma highway.
Police in Catoosa, Oklahoma made contact with the pair on Wednesday morning thanks to a camera pinging the license plate of the SUV they were traveling in.
Nathaniel Huey Jr., 31, was a suspect in the shooting deaths of a family of four in suburban Romeoville on Sunday. He was accompanied by a woman who was described as a “person-of-interest” in the case. Her family had reported her as missing/endangered on Tuesday, and her attorney said she had been abducted when addressing media on Thursday.
Those reports led Romeoville police to issue an alert for both individuals, as well as the SUV they were believed to be traveling in.
Ronnie Benight, chief of police in Catoosa, said that report enabled his department to identify the vehicle in their jurisdiction, in a shopping mall parking lot hundreds of miles from Romeoville.
“Once they got them in there, one of our cameras gave us two notifications, one for the same vehicle as an ‘individual that was of interest’ in their quadruple homicide, and a female that had been listed as missing or endangered,” Benight said. “When we got those notifications from the camera, that’s good information to know before you make contact.”
When officers arrived on the scene, they found the vehicle parked in the lot, but there was no one inside. Instead of immediately entering the mall in search of the two individuals, they instead chose to wait, a decision that Benight praised as being in the best interests of public safety.
Local
“They made a very good decision. It’s a large department store, that they waited for them to come out rather than to approach possibly-armed homicide suspects inside of a crowded area,” he said.
When the pair exited the mall, police attempted to apprehend them, but they got into the vehicle and fled the area, prompting a police pursuit.
Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly Chicago Catch-Up newsletter.
“We were fortunate enough to have immediate assistance from the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. The pursuit went probably two, maybe three miles before the individuals crashed, and the vehicle caught on fire,” Benight said.
Officers approaching the SUV heard two gunshots, according to police. The officers were able to extract a woman from the passenger seat of the vehicle, but she ultimately died from her injuries at an area hospital.
Huey was pronounced dead at the scene.
While the investigation has been handed over to Romeoville police and Oklahoma state law enforcement, Benight says his department is grateful they were able to play a role in offering some closure in the killings.
“We hope the part that we could play on this to maybe bring some resolution, some closure. That gives us a little bit of comfort,” he said.
