Through 5 a.m. Tuesday, the city recorded 488 homicides, marking a 47 percent increase from 331 for the same year-earlier period and exceeding the 481 for the entire 2015, according to official Police Department statistics.



The number of shooting victims has topped 2,930, approaching the 2,988 total for all of last year, according to a Tribune analysis.



Even at 488 homicides, the Police Department's statistics do not include killings on area expressways, police-involved shootings, other justifiable homicides or death investigations that could later be reclassified as homicides.



The Tribune's own database, which primarily uses the Cook County medical examiner's office to determine whether to count a death as a homicide, put the total number of killings at 512 as of early Tuesday.



Homicides and shootings in Chicago continue to far outpace both New York and Los Angeles, both bigger cities. According to official statistics through late August, the most recent publicly available, New York and Los Angeles had a combined 409 homicides, well below Chicago's total.