At least 52 people were shot, eight of them fatally, across Chicago over the weekend, the most violent of the year as summer gets underway, with a toll even higher than during the long Memorial Day holiday just a week earlier.
More than half the victims were wounded during a 12-hour burst of gunfire from Friday evening to Saturday morning. At least four of the 31 people shot during that time died after attacks on the West and South sides. At least one other person over the weekend was fatally stabbed, bringing the homicide toll to nine.
The level of violence, which typically spikes during the summer months, eclipsed that of the three-day Memorial Day weekend when at least 43 people were shot, seven of them fatally. Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson held a news conference Monday morning, calling the level of violence “despicable.”
In a statement Sunday night, the department’s chief spokesman said Johnson ordered “targeted patrols” in areas of potential retaliation by gangs. “Those efforts have resulted in 19 arrests on gun-related charges and 81 illegal weapons seized since Friday evening,” Anthony Guglielmi said. “Several people of interest are also being questioned in relation to some of our incidents and detectives have good video leads in others.”
The most recent homicides from the weekend happened Sunday morning in the Old Town Triangle neighborhood on the North Side. Two men were found dead around 6 a.m. inside a car hit by at least a dozen bullets in the 100 block of West North Avenue, according to police.
The driver, Tavion Matthews, 22, was shot several times in the back and a passenger, Marcus Walker Jr., 25, also suffered several gunshot wounds. They were pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Both lived in Old Town.
The two were shot when at least two people in a white car traveling west on North Avenue opened fire, police said. The shooters drove off north on LaSalle Street, police said.
Less than two hours earlier, Denise Weekly, 26, was shot and killed in the 4900 block of South Princeton Avenue in Fuller Park on the South Side, police said. She was struck in the chest and taken to the University of Chicago Hospital, where she died, police said.
On Saturday morning, four people were shot in the Gold Coast neighborhood and, hours later, another four people were shot in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side.
In the first shooting, around 2 a.m., two men standing outside a red van in the 300 block of East Chicago Avenue heard gunshots and saw several cars speeding away. They were both hit and went to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, about a block away, police said.
One of the men, 28, was shot in both legs and the other, 26 was shot in the buttocks. Both were stabilized, police said.
Two other men, 28 and 25, were also shot there and drove off in a silver Toyota sedan until they flagged down an ambulance at Cermak Road and State Street, police said. The 28-year-old suffered a graze wound to the head and was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was stabilized. The 25-year-old was shot in the head and stabilized at Stroger Hospital.
The shooting in Austin was about 9:50 p.m. Police said at least one gunman opened fire in the 5600 block of West Madison Street, hitting four people in the parking lot across the street.
A 17-year-old girl was hit in the lower backside and taken to Stroger Hospital, where she was stabilized. A 17-year-old boy was also wounded in the lower backside and stabilized at Mount Sinai Hospital, police said. An 18-year-old man was shot in the neck and taken in critical condition to Stroger. A 22-year-old man was shot in the arm and stabilized at Mount Sinai, police said.
Police said they did not know who the intended target or targets were, or whether the four knew each other.
The most recent shooting this weekend happened Monday morning in the Grand Crossing neighborhood in the South Side. A 27-year-old woman was inside a red Toyota sedan with a man when the two began arguing, police said. The man pepper-sprayed the woman and shot her leg. She was taken to University of Chicago Medical Center in good condition, police said.
The youngest shooting victim from the weekend was a 16-year-old boy wounded in the Little Village neighborhood. About 8:10 p.m., the teen was walking north in the 2200 block of South California Avenue when another male flashed a handgun and opened fire, police said.
The 16-year-old was hit in the right shoulder and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in good condition, police said.
