It seems that the promise of fireworks and other Fourth of July celebrations didn’t stop gunfire from erupting in Chicago over the long holiday weekend. Dozens of shootings were reported from Wednesday afternoon through Sunday night, leaving at least a dozen dead and 74 others wounded, according to the Chicago Tribune’s tally. It was the latest in a series of waves of gun violence in the Windy City.
Not even the youngest were spared from this weekend’s violence. One of the wounded was 5-year-old boy Jaden Donald, who was actually watching fireworks at Chicago’s South Side park when he was shot. His mother, Jasmine Donald, told local ABC affiliate WLS that she never thought a park, of all places, would be so dangerous:
“It don’t take but a second, being wrong place these days at a wrong time, such as a park where a kids are playing, shouldn’t be…You never think for a moment that being in a park playing with your kids, you’ve got to worry about them being shot.”
Other incidents from the violent holiday weekend include a gang-related drive-by shooting that killed one man and injured seven people, as well as a bloody landlord-tenant dispute that wounded five people.
According to RedEye Chicago, the city reached its 200th homicide of the year on Saturday, when a 24-year-old man was shot to death. But despite the grim number of shootings over the weekend, Chicago’s homicide rate is still trailing that of last year. This weekend’s violence left the city with a total of 202 homicides, compared to the recorded 275 homicides during last year at this time. [Although, as Slate’s Crime blogger Justin Peters explained earlier this year, the drop in the Windy City’s homicide rate won’t be sustainable for long.]
