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Chicago weekend shootings: 10 dead, 40 wounded
Everytime I speak to my mom she says that although she misses me, she is so glad I'm not living in Chicago anymore.
The gun situation is ridiculous. I feel so bad for people who live with this kind of senseless violence everyday.
At least 10 people were killed and 40 others wounded in one of the most violent Chicago weekends in recent history.
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that most of the victims were in their mid-teens or early 30s, with the exception of 6-year-old Aliyah Shell, who was gunned down Saturday while playing in front of her home in the Little Village neighborhood.
Two teens were arrested and charged in Aliyah's slaying Sunday.
As temperatures climbed into the 80s -- a record in the city for March -- the violence continued.
Saturday, Adrian Cruz, 24, was fatally wounded in a drive-by shooting on the 5900 block of South Fairfield Avenue. Vincent Fitts, 22, was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head in the 800 block of East 79th Street.
Around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, Jeremy Anthony, 24, was shot in the back while inside a vehicle in the 6300 block of South Ellis Avenue, CBS reports. Anthony was pronounced dead on arrival at the nearby University of Chicago Medical Center.
Fox Chicago has a rundown of the other fatal shootings here.
Those wounded in shootings, according to the Sun-Times, included a 1-year-old girl and her mother, who suffered graze wounds Sunday on the South Side.
CBS Chicago reports that both teens arrested in Aliyah's death were affiliated with the Latin Kings street gang.
?This is what the politicians should focus on, instead of promising lower taxes and lowering the gas and stopping pornography,? neighbor Ray Navarro said. ?You know what? I?ll pay the taxes. I?ll pay the high gas prices, but focus on this violence that?s killing these kids.?
Last year, two Chicago Sun-Times reporters won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of a similarly violent Chicago weekend in 2008 -- when 40 people were shot and seven killed in just 59 hours.
The violence garnered national attention, but this weekend was even worse. In 2010, lawmakers considered calling in the National Guard to combat Chicago gang violence.
On Sunday, community activist Andrew Holmes told ABC Chicago that people in the communities impacted by this violence need to speak up.
"You can't lose another child to gun violence," Holmes told the station. "If they stay silent this will continue to happen."
Re: Chicago weekend shootings: 10 dead, 40 wounded
We really want to move out of here. It has thankfully not really impacted our neighborhood so much, but I can't imagine that it will stay out for long.
It's so senseless and so heartbreaking.
It's sad that Chicago has had this issue for so long. I remember getting the lesson as a child to NEVER wear black/blue or black/red, or wear a baseball cap anyway but with the brim straight. To this damn day I don't wear red/black or blue/black and I live in Europe FFS. It makes me sad that I avoid old friends and neighborhoods because I've just gone soft and am too scared. And it just makes me sad that people have to be scared for their children's safety all day, everyday.
This is really sad, but I think your mom is over-reacting. A lot of this violence is confined to a few bad neighborhoods. Every so often, somebody is shot somewhere else, and it's huge news, whereas I found out about this weekend via this thread. I just checked my Sunday paper, and the story about the "violent weekend" is buried in the back. That's because in the places it happens, if they put it on the front page every time there was violence, they'd run out of room on the front page on a weekly basis.
I wish kids weren't dying and I wish the efforts people in these communities are making to help the violence were working faster, but it drives me nuts when people make Chicago sound like gangsters are tearing around the whole city on daily drive-by shooting sprees. Over 90% of the city is no more dangerous than any other city, and if you look at it by population, Chicago as a whole is actually a lot less violent than many smaller cities. Unless you're hanging out in one of a handful of neighborhoods (and possibly even if you aren't), you're more likely to be randomly shot to death walking down the street in Lubbock, Atlanta, Anchorage, Memphis, Detroit, New York, or Stockton. Heck, Springfield, IL is more dangerous than Chicago, IL--it's #3 on the Top 20 Most Dangerous American Cities list from Forbes. Rockford, IL is more violent than Chicago as well. Vegas and Tallahassee are more dangerous to live in or to visit. I never hear or read about people being afraid to go to Vegas, though, while Chicago has this reputation as, well, a place people's moms want them to avoid.
While I agree that you're not likely to get shot walking down the sidewalk in much of the city, your response here seems to me to be very ignorant.
The real point is that it should not be ok that there were over 30 shootings and 10 deaths in one weekend. It shouldn't be ok that most of this violence is condemned to "10% of the City." It shouldn't be ok that a child was murdered, regardless of where it happened.
Yes, you're probably safe from shooting in the Loop, Wicker Park, Lincoln Park, the West Loop, the Gold Cost and many, many more neighborhoods in Chicago. However, there are a lot of areas where you're not safe, where the population is undeserved, and where children live and die every.single.day. The fact that it doesn't affect *you* doesn't make it any less of a reality, or any less terrifying.
If this had happened in Mexico, the US gov't would have issued a travel warning and cruise ships pulled their stops.
Not to detract from the horrific violence in Chicago, but it took a LOT more sustained violence affecting civilians in Mexico for the State Department to issue travel advisories to Mexico.
*border city resident steps off the soapbox*
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It is definitely not ok that there were that many shootings -or any shootings, really - but the first several posts basically made it sound like Chicago is a place to avoid because it is so dangerous. That is just not so. Something needs to be done, but your average person need not fear visiting or living in the city.
Ms. Ma'am, while I get your point the neighborhoods where I used to work, and where my friends and most of my family members live ARE in those "handful of neighborhoods" where the shootings occur.
My mother is not overreacting and I'm not as ignorant as to not know that I'm probably safe in Millennium Park.
But like I said, I get your point it doesn't just happen in Chicago, but I thought that went without saying.
Agreed. We live in Edison Park and are not directly affected by these terrible shootings, but as a Chicago resident, it is very upsetting that these horrific crimes don't get much, if any, attention. It's so sad that these poor kids, especialy when the weather is nice, can't even walk to school or down the street for fear of being shot or in the middle of the cross-fire.
I can't agree with this enough. I know which areas of my city I shouldn't be in at night. I know which areas my H shouldn't be in at all, at any time of day. But the voilence in those hoods is no less terrible and heartbreaking for being expected.
*SCRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEACCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHH*
Hold the hellz up. Let me just say this, you are NOT, I repeat NOT likely to get randomly shot in Memphis. I complain about a lot of shiit in this town, but random violence is NOT. I repeat NOT one of them.
The crime in Memphis is typically contained to violence among those who know you. You may get mugged if you are walking in a shady area of town or someone on Beale Street/Downtown finds you unaware of your surroundings. But, a random bullet, Naw Dawg, that ain't happening.
Despite the crime stats (which are skewed because Memphis has long reported incidents in multiple ways - if you break in my home with a gun and I'm there, the crime will be burglary, assualt etc for one incident), Memphis isn't a OMG fear for your life city. You need to hang out with the wrong crowd to get shot around here.
I think he is looking at that model and at NYCs. The theory I'm proposing is that the CPD is intentionally going light on covering problem areas because they are mad at Rahm for not hiring more cops. So now they can say, "Look, see?!? We need more cops."
Same here.
The violence is horrifying. Children are DYING. In some of the neighborhoods that border mine, none the less. It is getting closer and closer to me, and it terrifies me. It terrifies me even more to think of how the people who live in these neighborhoods must feel every single day. I think of the mothers of these children, and I cry for them. I cry because this shouldn't be happening, and I cry because their neighborhoods don't have the resources to stop this from happening. It's sickening and heartbreaking and so many other things that I can't put to words.
Chicago is a sad and violent city, and we need some drastic change.
I agree that the number of people, particularly children, being shot is wrong and tragic, no matter when or where it occurs. My issue is with the "my mom doesn't want me in Chicago" stuff. Kids are also dying on the daily in tons of other places that don't have this reputation, but should. People get violently attacked and robbed in Vegas routinely, yet nobody tells people they are afraid for them when they say they're going to party on the strip. (For some insane reason my own mother is more worried about me living here than about my sister when she lived in Vegas, despite several of my sister's neighbors being attacked coming home from campus and my neighborhood having had only one murder the entire 6 years I've lived in it. And I am technically not in Chicago, although I can walk across the city limits from my home in about 5 minutes.) Of course it would be great if the other 10% of the city was as safe (relatively) as most neighborhoods. It would also be great if people realized that they need to be just as careful, of not moreso, when they're in Rockford or Tallahassee, FL.
I mean, last year two toddlers were shot in front of their homes in April, and it didn't get reported in any paper except the Rockford local ones. Two adults on the same block were also shot, and it's likely they were the intended targets. Then two teens were shot outside of the Showplace theater. By the end of the 2011 school year, the problem was so bad it was being referred to as a "crime spree," again in the local Rockford papers. When it happens in Chicago, though, people make a huge deal about it. They should always be making a huge deal about it, not just when it fits in with pre-existing ideas about urban violence.