Chicago weeps for its dead after record number killed in Floyd riots
‘I don’t even know how to put it into context. It’s beyond anything we’ve ever seen before’
CHICAGO suffered its most violent day in almost 60 years when 18 people died as police became overwhelmed by rioting during the George Floyd protests.
The deaths on May 31 were the highest on record, according to the Chicago University’s Crime Lab, which has been tracking the data since 1961.
Among those reportedly killed was a man on his way to pay a phone bill, a high school student and a man from Washington DC visiting his family.
Police were put under pressure as the protests turned violent – 65,000 calls were made to the emergency services, 50,000 more than usual.
The figures threatened to end a longterm trend of a decline in killings in the city, with the number of total murders in 2019 around a third lower than 2016.
Community leaders, law enforcement and researchers monitoring the events all expressed shock at the fatalities.
Max Kapustin, senior research director at the Crime Lab, told the Chicago Sun-times that the death tally was so high he struggled to find historic comparisons.
“We’ve never seen anything like it, at all,” Mr Kapustin said. “I don’t even know how to put it into context. It’s beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.”
The Rev Michael Pfleger, who leads Chicago’s St Sabina Church and is a campaigner against gun violence, pointed to the anti-police brutality protests. Chicago, like other cities across America, saw demonstrations after the death of Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis tip into episodes of violence and looting on Sunday.
“On Saturday and particularly Sunday, I heard people saying all over, ‘Hey, there’s no police anywhere, police ain’t doing nothing,” Mr Pfleger said. “I sat and watched a store looted for over an hour. No police came. I got in my car and drove around to some other places getting looted [and] didn’t see police anywhere.”
According to the Crime Lab’s records, the previous highest single day of murders in the city was on August 4 1991, when 13 people were killed.
In a 2,500-word article on Monday, the Chicago Sun-times covered the killings and gave details of some of those who had lost their lives.
John Tiggs, 32, was shot as he walked into a mobile phone shop. His family said he was paying a bill. “John had a big heart. He was there for us,” his aunt was quoted in the paper saying.
Lazarra Daniels was a student at the high school DRW College Prep. She was shot close to 11pm on Sunday evening. The school’s principal called her death an “incalculable loss”.
Angelo Bronson, a 36-year-old father of two, had travelled from Washington DC where he worked installing solar panels. He was shot dead when someone in a passing car opened fire.
Keishanay Bolden was 18 when she died. She had been studying law enforcement and justice at Western Illinois University and hoped to become a correctional officer.
Two brothers, 31-year-old Darius Jelks and Maurice Jelks, 39, were fatally shot while driving from their mother’s home, according to Mail Online, while Danyal Jones, 30, was shot while standing on the porch in the middle of the night. Teyonna Lofton, 18, was reportedly shot after her own graduation party. A bullet struck her elbow during a trip to the petrol station. She survived but faces months of therapy.
Between 7pm on May 29 to 11pm on May 31, 25 people were killed and a further 85 wounded.
Violence in Chicago has often made headlines, with Donald Trump at times drawing attention to the killings there in tweets. The city is the hometown of Barack Obama, the former US president. Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor and also a Democrat, has clashed with Mr Trump in the past.
On a visit to Chicago last October, his first as president, Mr Trump called the city a haven for criminals that was “embarrassing to us as a nation”.