Another bloody weekend in Chicago: 9 dead, 45 wounded in gun violence

Aamer Madhani | USA TODAY

CHICAGO — At least nine people were killed and 45 others were wounded over the weekend in shootings, an ugly turn for the nation's third-largest city as it made progress stemming the murder rate in the first half of 2018.

In addition to the weekend’s fatal shootings, the city recorded a tenth homicide early Monday. A man, who police said was in his 30s, was killed by blunt force trauma on the city’s Southwest Side. Police said they found a weapon but declined to give details about it or the circumstances of the killing.

Investigators said many of the weekend's incidents were gang-related. The city historically sees a frustrating uptick in gun violence as the temperature warms. Chicago reached a high of 95 on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.

First Deputy Superintendent Anthony Riccio said the spike in violence is “frustrating,” even as Chicago has seen gun violence decline in recent months — shootings and murders are down about 20 percent so far this year.

The downward trend in violence in 2018 follows two difficult years — Chicago recorded 650 murders in 2017 and 762 in 2016 — in which the city saw homicide rates of the late 1980s and 1990s, when Chicago and other big metropolises were in the midst of the crack-cocaine epidemic.

“We continue to make progress despite what some of these numbers look like — some very good progress,” Riccio told reporters about the bloody weekend. “But we’re not happy at all about this. We’re not saying our progress is a success by any means. But we are continuing to move in the right direction.”

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In one of the most chaotic scenes over the weekend, a 23-year-old woman was fatally shot and five others were wounded in a pre-dawn incident Monday on the grounds of a public housing complex on the city’s West Side. Police said the shooting was sparked by a dispute, and bullet casings recovered by detectives indicated multiple weapons were fired.

When police and EMTs arrived, one of the wounded, a 17-year-old boy, appeared so badly injured that first responders thought he was dead and placed a sheet over him as they tended to the other victims.

Riccio said officers realized the boy was still alive after seeing movement under the sheet. The boy was taken to a nearby hospital, where he remains on life support, Riccio said.

At least four of the victims were “known to police” prior to the incident, and there is an ongoing conflict between rival gangs going on in the area, Riccio said. None of the victims is cooperating with the police.

“We believe they have a significant amount of information that would be helpful in this case,” Riccio said. “But for reasons we do not know, they are not cooperating,”

In another multiple casualty incident, three men and a woman were wounded on the city’s Southwest side late Sunday by an unknown assailant. The most seriously injured in that incident was a 21-year-old man who police described as known gang member. He had a gunshot wound to the chest and was listed in critical condition.

Police said no suspects were in custody in any of the deadly shootings.

The other fatal incidents include: