It was a warm but deadly weekend in the Windy City. From early Saturday morning until late Sunday morning 24 people were shot in Chicago. Casualties included at least three children under the age of 13. Five adults were murdered over the weekend.
In the West Englewood neighborhood on Chicago’s southwest side, six people were shot as a baby shower was taking place. On Saturday evening, around 6:30 p.m., approximately 20 children were playing in the front yard of a home in the 6300 block of South Seeley Avenue when shots rang out. After it was over, six people were wounded including an eight-year-old boy, who was shot in the chest and a 10-year-old girl, who was shot in the shin.
The children were taken to Comer Children’s Hospital where they were stabilized. The four wounded adults were taken to other hospitals in the area. A 29-year-old woman, shot in the shoulder and chest, is still in critical condition at Advocate Christ Medical Center.
“The ones that were doing the shooting, none of them got shot,” said Richard Nix, whose oldest grandson was hosting the event. “It’s just all the innocent people.”
Nix described the panic as children were bottlenecked at the door, falling on top of each other as they tried to escape the bullets.
“We were trying to pick the kids up, get the kids out of the way…. They were going to get crushed,” Nix said. “It was nothing but kids in front of the house, sitting on the porch. They was just playing, and the shooting went off.”
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi asked the public for help locating suspects in the shooting in a tweet. Guglielmi also tweeted, “Individuals on the scene are not being cooperative with detectives.”
Then on Sunday, Guglielmi tweeted again: “Prayers are with the victims from this despicable shooting. While info and cooperation are very limited, detectives have been working around the clock on this and we suspect a possible motive is retaliation from an earlier incident.”
Similar violence erupted in other parts of the city over the weekend. Chicago police usually see a spike in violence when the weather gets warmer and both weekend days saw temperatures in the 60s — the warmest days so far this year in Chicago.
On the west side of the city in the East Garfield Park neighborhood, three people were shot on the 3900 block of West Wilcox Street in the early hours of Sunday morning. A 34-year old man, a 33-year-old man, and a 26 year-old-man were taken to area hospitals with arm and leg wounds.
Then in the Englewood neighborhood, police were called to a home on South Normal Boulevard where they found a 52-year-old man dead from a gunshot wound to the head. Police believe that this incident may have been a domestic dispute, and they have a “person of interest” in custody.
Also Sunday morning, police in the Woodlawn neighborhood were called to a shooting on the 6600 block of South Maryland Avenue. They found a 32-year-old man, who had been shot several times in the back. The man was taken to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead a short time later. No arrests have yet been made in this case.
On Saturday afternoon, 19-year-old Demonte Davis was killed in an incident in Morgan Park. Another man, a 22-year-old was wounded in that incident.
After such a terrible and bloody weekend, you might think that the incoming mayor of the city would be seething over the deaths of her citizens and vowing vengeance on those who perpetrated these heinous crimes. But Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot (shown above) seems to believe that such violence is a seasonal thing.
“We’re going to be heading soon into the summer violence season,” Lightfoot told CNN. “After that’s over, we’ll evaluate at that point, but I’m going to be working closely with the (police) superintendent and with his executive team to make sure that we keep our neighborhoods safe.”
“Summer violence season”? Really?
It sounds as if Chicago’s next mayor believes that gang violence is a seasonal thing like mosquitoes or sunburns. One envisions future community public service announcements during the summer: “Remember, it’s warm outside, so don’t forget your sunscreen and your bullet-proof vests!”
Even though violence does go up in the summer months, the weather is clearly not the problem; the violence is. The culture of violence in Chicago is a direct result of leftist policies mixed with corruption that results in a stew of gang violence mixed with apathy and hopelessness from the city’s residents.
In the wake of the baby shower shooting, police spokesman Guglielmi’s tweet was very telling: “Individuals on the scene are not being cooperative with detectives.”
The citizens of Chicago are more frightened by the specter of the gangs and gang retribution within their city than they trust the police’s ability to protect them. In Chicago, the crooks are winning.
Photo of Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot: AP Images
