More than 100 shot in violent Chicago Fourth of July weekend
CHICAGO -- At least 101 people were shot between Friday afternoon and early Wednesday in a violent Fourth of July holiday weekend in Chicago, reports the Chicago Tribune. 15 of the victims died.
Nearly half were shot in a spate of violence as the weekend closed out between 3:30 p.m. Tuesday and 3:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Last year's Independence Day weekend, which was one day shorter than this year's, ended with 66 people shot, four of them fatally, reports CBS Chicago -- a total that stoked cautious optimism with the lowest death toll for the July 4 weekend in nearly a decade.
The last time the Fourth of July holiday weekend spanned four full days was in 2013, reports the Tribune. At least 74 people were shot between Wednesday evening and early Monday and 12 of them died, according to data collected by the paper.
The shootings came as the department -- as has become standard procedure during long holiday warm weather holiday weekends -- put more than 1,000 extra officers on the street.
The violence this year was largely concentrated in the city's south and west sides, including districts where the Chicago Police Department have deployed extra resources including hundreds of officers on overtime.
The youngest person shot was a 13-year-old boy seriously wounded in Gage Park on Friday night, the paper reports.
The violent weekend brings the total number of people shot in Chicago so far in 2017 to more than 1,800, according to data maintained by the Tribune, still below the 2,035 recorded at this time last year.
On Saturday, Chicago Police touted a 14-percent decline in shootings this year compared to the first six months of 2016, and they hoped to tamp down the holiday weekend violence with the help of a new gun violence strike force that includes ATF agents, reports CBS Chicago.