Dozens of shootings rocked Chicago this Independence Day weekend. Breitbart reports that 68 people were shot, 5 fatally.
Two people were killed on July 4, and three were shot dead on Friday. Sixty-three other people were wounded by gunshots from Thursday morning to Monday morning, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Long weekend of violence
The wave of violence rolling through the Windy City this summer continued last week with two fatal shootings on Independence Day. A woman was killed before dawn on July 4 after a struggle with a man over a weapon. The firearm discharged amid the conflict inside a home in West Garfield Park.
Another man was shot dead in a drive-by shooting around 11:30 a.m. on July 4 that wounded three others, including a 17-year-old boy, according to the Sun-Times. The victims were shot in a group while standing outside in Humboldt Park on the West Side.
Two more people were killed within minutes of each other in the early morning Friday. 37-year-old Oliver Booth received a fatal shot to the chest around 2:47 a.m on the 900 block of North Lavergne Avenue. A woman who was with him took two shots, but was later stabilized.
Minutes after that fatal shooting, 22-year-old Akeelah D. Addison was approached by a man “in the 4200 block of South Wells Street in Fuller Park” and shot in the head around 2:55 a.m, the Sun-Times reports. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
A 40-year-old man, Tory Terry, was also shot while standing outside on “a sidewalk in the 300 block of North Laramie Avenue” Friday evening. He received a fatal shot to the abdomen and was pronounced dead at the hospital. A 65-year-old man who was with him was brought to the hospital in critical condition after getting shot in the face, arm, and back of the head.
There were no more gun homicides after Friday, but the violence continued with five people, including two teenagers, injured in a single shooting after 2. a.m. Friday. All told, 14 were wounded on Thursday, July 4; 17 were injured on Friday; 15 people were shot on Saturday; and 17 were wounded Sunday, none fatally.
Shootings in Chicago
The city’s police superintendent Eddie Johnson will hold a press conference Monday on the weekend’s violence. Johnson and the city’s new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, have struggled with a surge in summer violence that has continued apace despite Lightfoot’s pledge to get control of it, the Chicago Tribune reports.
Violence in Chicago tends to increase in the summer months, especially around Memorial Day weekend and the Fourth of July. Last year, more than 50 people were shot, 10 of them fatally, through the July 4th weekend. The year before, 87 were shot, 14 fatally, according to the Sun-Times.
As a deterrent, Lightfoot flooded Chicago streets with 1,500 police officers scheduled to work overtime, but the long holiday weekend proved deadly anyway. The violence over Memorial Day weekend this year was similarly deadly despite Lightfoot ordering 1,200 more police officers on the streets.
The Independence Day toll continues a streak of several deadly weekends in a row. Over the weekend before July 4, at least 56 people were shot, 5 fatally.
Chicago’s new mayor vowed to put an end to the heavily gun-controlled city’s gun violence plague, but there are few signs that the summer carnage will stop this year.
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