USA TODAY International Edition
As Chicago temperatures climb, so do crimes, with 69 shot in a week
CHICAGO — At least 69 people have been shot in the nation’s third-largest city since Monday, a troubling uptick of violence for a metropolis that has seen some recent success in reducing shooting incidents.
The surge in violence, which includes five people who have been fatally shot, comes as Chicago Police Department officials have expressed optimism in recent months that gun violence was on the downward trend in a city that tallied more than 1,400 homicides in 2016 and 2017 combined.
Chicago recorded a 22.3% reduction in murders and a 26.5% decline in shooting incidents for the first four months of 2018 compared with the same period in 2017, according to police department data. April also marked the 14th consecutive month in which Chicago recorded a decline in gun violence, according to police department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.
But as the weather has warmed here this past week after Chicago endured its fourth-coldest April on record, the city has experienced a spasm of violence.
At least 23 people were shot between Friday evening and Saturday evening, according to police.
Police and federal authorities on Saturday continued the hunt for an assailant or assailants who critically wounded an agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives a day earlier on the city’s Southwest Side. Police said the agent, who was shot in the face but is expected to survive, was part of a new strike force – a partnership between federal and local law enforcement – aimed at stemming gun violence in the city.
Police officials said several of the incidents, including a drive-by shooting late Friday in which a 41-year-old man and 17-year-old boy were wounded, appear to be gang-related. In two separate shootings Saturday afternoon on the West Side, a 26-year-old man and a 25year-old man who police said are documented gang members were shot. The 25-year-old who was shot multiple times as he rode a bike was in critical condition at a hospital, police said.
In the latest fatal shooting, a 39-yearold man was gunned down late Friday on the city’s South Side. Police said they responded to calls of shots fired in the area and officers found the victim dead in an alley with gunshot wounds to the face and buttocks.
In an incident Thursday afternoon, officers found a 42-year-old man on a South Side street with a gunshot wound to the buttocks and a graze wound to the head. The man was found after he had been thrown from a vehicle and the driver sped away, according to police. The victim was taken to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead.
At least a few of the victims were children, including a girl, 4, who was shot in the shoulder Tuesday evening as she was with her parents on the porch of their home on the city’s South Side. Police say someone in a dark-colored sedan pulled up near the house before opening fire.
In a separate incident Wednesday evening, a 41-year-old man was struck in his thigh and leg as he lay in bed in his apartment on the city’s West Side. Police said the bullet was fired by somebody in an adjacent apartment. That suspect fled before police arrived at the scene.
Another victim, a 15-year-old boy, was struck in the head by a bullet on Wednesday afternoon as he made on his way home from school on a city bus on the city’s Southwest Side.
The boy, who was listed in good condition, traveled several miles from his home to attend one of the city’s most academically selective high schools.
“It infuriates me that we have a good kid doing what we all expect him to do, and he’s a victim of something like this,” Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson told reporters.
“This is why we have to have common-sense gun legislation in this country. Not just this city, this state, but in this country, to stop things like this from happening.”
Police say they don’t believe the teen was targeted but was struck by an errant bullet.