The Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that the statistics cover Friday evening through Sunday night, creating a grim holiday season, even by Chicago’s standards.
In one series of shootings on Christmas day in East Chatham, according to the Chicago Tribune, James Gill, 18, and Roy Gill, 21, were killed when someone came out of an alley and opened fire on a front porch during a family holiday party. Five other people were wounded during the free-for-all shooting.
And earlier in the Day on Sunday, police responded to a call at 4:30 p.m. of shots fired in the South Shores neighborhood and found 25-year-old Jamil Farley with gunshot wounds to the back, leg, and head. Farley was later pronounced dead. Earlier, at 1:45 p.m. police found Jerry Thomas, 22, in the 4400 block of West Chicago Avenue. He had been shot multiple times and died at the scene.
Hours earlier, a man was found shot multiple times near the Apostolic Labor of Love church, where a big blood stain can still be seen on the front steps. This victim later died of his wounds. These and other shootings added up to being worse than last year’s holiday season.
Chicago Police Department spokesman Jose Estrada told the New York Times that the number of homicides in the city so far this year is 745, up from 476 at the same time last year. This is the first time since 1977 there have been more than 700 deaths in a year, and we still have a week to go.
The total number of shooting victims so far this year is 4,252, up 47 percent from 2,884 at this time in 2015, and most of the victims are men under the age of 30. And Chicago is on course to beat out New York City and Los Angeles combined in the number of murders in 2016, a record no city should be proud of. Police are blaming the ridiculously high statistics on gang violence and what they are calling a “small subset” of violent offenders.
