Once again the weekend brings death to Chicago with five dead and 14 wounded, ten of those in a less than 4-hour period. With all the violence this year, Chicago has seen a 7 percent rise in shootings over last year.
By the late afternoon on Sunday, the Chicago Tribune had reported that violence had killed five Chicagoans starting on Friday night.
The youngest killed was a 16-year-old boy.
Much of the violence occurred in a short window of time. Overnight as Saturday shifted into Sunday, 10 shootings occurred in about a four-hour window, police report.
This spate of weekend violence was preceded by a bloody Thursday where three were killed and 10 more wounded. All those killed were males, most in gang related shootings.
This comes as some in Chicago have launched an effort to stop residents from referring to Chicago as “Chiraq.”
Many city residents have begun to call the city “Chiraq” because they feel their metropolis is more dangerous than actual war zones in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Several Chicago musicians and activists, though, are trying to prevent people from using such gallows humor to describe the city.
Activists have launched a “no mo chiraq” movement on social media to discourage the use of the sobriquet.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com