A 4-year-old boy and an 89-year-old man were two of at least 35 shooting victims over the weekend in the city of Chicago.
The boy was shot in the arm around 5:20 p.m. on Friday, July 28, in the Austin neighborhood of west Chicago and was taken to the hospital in good condition NBC 5 reported.
A 27-year-old woman and 19-year-old man were also shot in the same incident. The man was shot in the left arm and was taken to the hospital in good condition, while the woman was pronounced dead.
An 89-year-old man was caught in the crossfire of a shooting aimed at another man while sitting in front of a business around 6:30 p.m. on Friday.
The 89-year-old suffered a graze wound to his arm and refused to be taken to the hospital for treatment, NBC 5 reported.
The business behind him suffered damage from the bullets.
A 32-year-old man later went to the hospital saying he had a wound in his foot from the same incident.
Three others were fatally shot in the city over the weekend, all of them men: an 18-year-old, a 20-year-old, and a 21-year-old.
The 18-year-old man, Eugene Winters, was shot in the head at around 10:45 p.m. on Friday on Chicago’s southwest side and pronounced dead at the hospital, the Sun-Times Media Wire reported.
Around 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, the 20-year-old man was found unresponsive in a backyard, also on the city’s southwest side. He had a gunshot wound to his back and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The most recent fatal shooting happened just after midnight on Sunday when a 21-year-old man was shot in the abdomen while walking on a sidewalk in the Dolands Addition neighborhood in northern Chicago.
The man was shot from a passing vehicle, police said, and was taken to Loyola Hospital where he was later pronounced dead.
The deaths were four of 400 homicides that have happened in the city since the beginning of the year, NBC Chicago reports, and the victims were among 2,150 shooting victims in the city this year, the Sun-Times Media Wire reports.
One month ago, the Chicago police announced the addition of 20 federal agents to a Crime Gun Strike Force to help stop gun-related crime in the city.
The move comes after President Donald Trump promised to send in federal help over the crime and killings that he characterized as reaching “epidemic proportions” and Attorney General Jeff Sessions decried as “unacceptable.”
“No child in America should have to walk the streets of their neighborhood in fear of violent criminals, and yet in Chicago, thousands of children do every day,” Sessions said in a statement. “The Trump administration will not let the bloodshed go on.”
In addition to the 20 federal agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), the task force is composed of six intelligence specialists, 12 officers from the Chicago Police Department, two officers from the state police, and four specialists with the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network.
