Chicago’s Mount Sinai Hospital had to temporarily stop accepting patients Sunday morning, according to a hospital spokesperson, Roberta Rakove, the Senior VP for External Affairs. Mount Sinai is just one of five trauma centers in the city.
The hospital spokesperson told CNN the facility had to go on “by-pass,” meaning it had to turn away incoming patients arriving by ambulance because it was already dealing with too many trauma patients.
According to Chicago’s ABC7, city leaders and community activists have planned to address the deadly gun violence pervasive in the city. Chicago Police Public Information Officer Anthony Guglielmi said Sunday that officers responded to several multi-victim shooting incidents on the west side of Chicago stemming from gang conflicts.
Police Chief Eddie Johnson, in a press conference on Sunday, gave a rundown of the violent acts. Some were individual shootings while several were mass shootings involving as many as 10 people being shot. Ages of the shooting victims ranged from a five-year-old child to men in their 30s.
The senseless shootings in Texas, Ohio and the 56 folks who were shot this weekend in Chicago are all horrible and must be condemned. This is pure evil and we must stomp it out. And yes, we should pray for the victims, the 1st responders and the soul of our nation.
— Tim Burchett (@timburchett) August 4, 2019
The violence got so bad that an additional 50 police officers were brought into the 10th District alone. Chief Johnson noted the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton. “You have to stop yourself and ask what will it take before we get a handle on what’s going on,” Johnson said. “Not only in Chicago but across the country.”
“From police departments to the court systems to prosecutors to legislators — we have to come together and figure out more common-sense solutions to these problems because clearly too many of our citizens are being shot and killed.”
And here it is, Monday morning in America. Mass shootings in three cities have left 37 people dead and close to 90 people wounded.
