Mayor: ‘Enough is enough’ as 14 people shot in 15 hours in Chicago

The Chicago Tribune reports that of the eight people wounded, one was an 11-month old baby, and another was a two-year-old toddler. Among the people killed was a pregnant mother, a grandmother and the mother of a four-year-old child.

In the one shooting that took place Monday night in the Back of the Yards neighborhood of the city, two women, one of them pregnant, two men and a child, coming home from an outing were gunned down in a barrage of bullets. Both men sustained injuries, leaving one of them in critical condition in a local hospital.

“You have an innocent family coming home from a family outing. Somebody opens fire on two women, a child and two men,” Chicago Deputy Police Chief Eugene Roy told the media. “In a second, two generations of that child’s family were wiped out.”

The violence Chicago has been experiencing is reminiscent of Chicago in the “Roaring Twenties,” except that it is worse for its randomness. Monday’s bloodbath followed two weekends in a row during which the city saw more than 50 shot. According to the Chicago Tribune, this alarming statistic “is a first” since the paper began keeping track of shootings about four years ago.

“Pick a street, any street in Chicago.” This shooting took place on Dec. 17, 2014 near 79th and Clyde Street.

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Statistics show that at least 2,300 people have been shot in Chicago this year, or 400 more than were shot during the same time period last year. Including Sunday, 359 homicides (gun deaths), have been recorded, up 21 percent from 296 a year ago, based on a preliminary report from the Chicago police Department.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, using the central theme of his administration, said the city needed better gun control. On Tuesday, in a statement, Emanuel addressed the shooting in the Back of the Yards, expressing his anger, and saying, “enough is enough.”

“I’m gonna try to control my anger,” Emanuel said at a press conference on Tuesday. “We have way too many guns on the streets of the city of Chicago, with too little values, and the penalties that don’t match the values of the city of Chicago.” According to Newser, he added, “It’s time that our criminal justice system and the laws as it relates to access to guns and the penalties for using [them] reflect the values of the people of the city of Chicago.”