Chicago Courthouse Evacuating After Person Enters With Knife (1)

Chicago’s federal courthouse is being evacuated as law enforcement negotiates with a person who entered the lobby with a knife Tuesday morning, a spokesman for the US Marshals Service confirmed.

The incident started about 10:40 am Central time, when an armed “male subject” presented the knife and asked to speak to law enforcement, said Brady McCarron. The building’s lobby was cleared of everyone except the subject and law enforcement agents, and there have been no reports of injuries, he said.

Authorities initially put the building on lockdown, then as the matter stretched on for hours, decided to evacuate floor by floor, McCarron said late Tuesday afternoon.

The Everett M. Dirksen US Courthouse, home to the Eastern Division of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois as well as the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, is located in a skyscraper in downtown Chicago.