Shootings decline for a second straight weekend in Chicago

CHICAGO — Gun violence in Chicago declined for the second weekend in a row, but the shooting death of a congressman’s grandson thrust the city back into the national spotlight.

Jovan Wilson, the 15-year-old grandson of Rep. Danny Davis, was among nine people killed between Friday afternoon and Sunday night.

Nineteen other people were wounded by gunfire, including four who were hit as they sat in a car in the North Austin neighborhood on the Northwest Side, according to police. This was the second straight weekend that shootings decreased in Chicago after a bloody end to October, when 17 people were killed and 42 others were wounded over the last weekend, according to data kept by the Tribune.

There have been nearly 700 homicides in the city so far this year and nearly 4,000 people shot, a level of violence not seen in Chicago since the late 1990s, according to Chicago Tribune and police data.

But it wasn’t the numbers that drew national attention this weekend. It was the shooting death of Wilson over a pair of gym shoes, according to police.

Wilson was arguing with two other teens about a pair of borrowed gym shoes Friday evening when the confrontation escalated and he was shot dead in his Englewood home. The teens have been charged with murder.

“I grieve for my family,” Davis said at a news conference over the weekend. “I grieve for the young man who pulled the trigger. I grieve for his family, his parents, his friends, some of whom will never see him again.”

Later Friday night, Chicago police officers shot and killed a man they say was shooting at another man in the West Englewood neighborhood on the South Side, authorities said.

The officers were in a marked car when they saw someone firing at a 26-year-old man, police said. They parked, got out of their car and ran toward the gunman as he kept firing, according to authorities.

The officers drew their weapons and fired, hitting the man several times. He was identified as Darius Jones.

The Independent Police Review Board was investigating, which is routine in police-involved shootings.