Nine people were killed in Chicago over the weekend, including a 7-year-old girl, with no arrests made regarding any of the murders.
The girl and her 6-year-old sister were struck by gunshots in the city’s Belmont Central neighborhood on Aug. 15 while they were being placed in the back seat of a vehicle by their mother.
While the older sister was pronounced dead, the younger one “is fighting for her life at this time” at a hospital, Brian McDermott, the chief of patrol for the Chicago Police Department (CPD), told reporters during a briefing.
“To say that I am sad and outraged would be an understatement. I can only hope that every resident of the city is as angry, saddened, and outraged as I am at this time. Too many young people have lost their lives to senseless gun violence in the city of Chicago,” he said.
Officials asked community members to come forward and share information pertaining to the shooting, as no one was in custody for it or the eight other murders that took place between 6 p.m. on Aug. 13 and 11:59 p.m. on Aug. 15, a CPD spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.
The first killing took place on the afternoon of Aug. 14. A 59-year-old man was pronounced dead at Mt. Sinai Hospital after being shot while driving away from someone inside another vehicle in the city’s Humboldt Park neighborhood.
A 33-year-old man was pronounced dead at the University of Chicago Medical Center at around 2 a.m. on Aug. 15, after he was shot in the chest in the city’s Grand Crossing neighborhood. Police noted that they were familiar with the victim.
Just after 8 p.m. on Aug. 15, a 25-year-old man was struck in the torso while on the sidewalk by a person inside a vehicle that approached him. The man was pronounced dead at the University of Chicago Hospital.
Details for the other killings weren’t made available.
Chicago has struggled with shootings for years, in part because offenders are rarely caught. In the past, officials have said the reluctance of community members to share information on shootings hinders investigations and makes it more difficult to identify and find the shooters.
Chicago recorded 478 homicides through Aug. 11, up by 2 percent from the same time last year. Murders skyrocketed in Chicago and other major U.S. cities in 2020.
New York has recorded 260 murders as of Aug. 8, an increase of about 1 percent from last year. San Antonio’s murder numbers have also risen only slightly, from 71 between January and June 2020 to 74 through June this year.
In other major cities, murders have risen sharply again.
Los Angeles police data, for example, show 232 murders through Aug. 7, a jump of 22 percent from last year. And murders in Philadelphia have increased by 26 percent as of Aug. 12 when compared to 2020.
