There were 67 people shot and 11 killed over the long Independence Day weekend in Chicago. Of the 67, eight were shot, with one killed, in a single Saturday evening attack in the West Side neighborhood of Lawndale.
The Chicago Tribune lists the details of the some of the gruesome shootings:
At Stroger [Cook County Hospital] were: a woman, 72, with a wound to an ankle; a woman, 41, with a wound to her right thigh; a man, 43, with gunshot wounds to the leg and back; a man, 45, shot in the penis and right thigh; and a man, 48, shot in the leg and buttocks. At Mount Sinai were: a man, 31, shot in the wrist, and a woman, 20, shot in the right leg. Police described all the victims as having had their conditions stabilized.
Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy issued a press release in June boasting of the more than 2900 firearm seizures the department had made in 2013:
“We continue to achieve significant decreases in murders, shootings, and overall crime this year, yet there are too many illegal guns on our streets,” said Superintendent McCarthy. “The passage of significant legislation in Springfield last week requiring reporting the loss and theft of guns is an important step forward and there’s more work to be done to keep illegal weapons off our streets.”
Despite the seizures, and technically lower overall crime statistics for the year, of which Mayor Rahm Emanuel and McCarthy consistently remind Chicagoans, the murder rate since early May is rivaling the same period for 2012’s year-long bloodbath in the city of Chicago.
For the 28 days leading up to this past Father’s Day weekend–another bloodbath itself, in which 46 were shot and 8 were killed, including one shot by a police officer–murder numbers matched 2012 exactly with 41. Chicago Police data show that in the two weeks following, another 27 were gunned down and killed.
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