Shooting outside Chicago funeral home injures 15
Fifteen people were injured, one person was being questioned and multiple suspects were being sought after gunfire erupted outside a funeral home on Chicago's South Side where at least one squad car was present, police said.
The shooting was part of an ongoing conflict involving the gang of a young man being mourned and a rival gang, police said Wednesday as the federal government planned to send more agents to the city to combat a spike in gun violence.
Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan said the man whose funeral people were attending had been killed in a drive-by shooting last week and that he was killed in retaliation for a previous shooting.
Police said people were outside a funeral home in the Gresham neighbourhood Tuesday when three people pulled up in a stolen car and two of them opened fire.
People at the funeral returned fire, the car crashed a short time later and the three occupants fled on foot, police said.
Police Superintendent David Brown said at least 60 shell casings were recovered following the shooting, which happened despite police having two squad cars outside the funeral home - a precaution the department regularly takes at funerals involving a gang member or those linked to gangs - as well as a tactical team deployed to the neighborhood.
"We had intelligence that the deceased was killed in a drive-by shooting ... and there was a gang connection and we deployed our resources accordingly," he told reporters at a news conference.
Meanwhile, An infant was killed and his twin brother was wounded when someone fired several shots into an Ohio home early Wednesday, authorities said. The shooting came just hours after two other separate shootings in the same city, Canton, left two men dead and two others wounded. The 1-yearold twins, Ace and Arcel Lucas, were sleeping on a couch inside the home when several shots rang out shortly before 2:30 a.m., authorities said.
The shooting comes as the Department of Homeland Security is planning to deploy dozens of federal agents to Chicago to deal with an uptick in violent crimes in the city