Weekend Violence in Chicago: 44 People Shot, 6 Dead

Chicago police work at the scene of a shooting near East Chicago Avenue and North State Street in the Near North Side neighborhood in a file photo. Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Chicago Sun-Times via AP

Multiple shooting incidents over the weekend resulted in at least 44 people being shot in Chicago, with six of them killed, according to the city’s police department.

Police are investigating the incidents but no one has been taken into custody over them. Weekend shooting incidents have been counted as occurring between June 17 and 19.

The first reported victim was a 40-year-old female who suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the head on Friday around 1 a.m. at 10700 block of S State St. She was pronounced dead after being taken to hospital.

At 1:38 a.m., a 22-year-old male was shot while inside a vehicle and pronounced dead a short time later.

At around 8:11 a.m. at the 2000 block of W. Van Buren, an unidentified male in his 20s was found dead with a gunshot wound to the face.

At around 8:28 p.m., a 30-year-old man who was sitting in front of a porch was shot by an unknown offender and died from his wounds.

A shooting incident resulted in five people being shot and wounded at 3000 block of S Rhodes at around 11:45 p.m. They were standing outside an open parking lot when they were shot at by an unknown offender.

On June 19, 3:36 a.m., a 40-year-old male was discovered on the sidewalk at 700 block of W. 72rd St. with a gunshot wound to the head and the body. He was sent to hospital in a critical condition and died not long after.

On the same day at 8:33 p.m., a 60-year-old woman was standing on the sidewalk of 6400 block of S. Marshfield when she was shot and later died.

South and West sides

The majority of shooting victims were from the South and West sides. The South side had 19 victims, the West side reported nine, and the Southwest Side registered four victims, according to Chicago Sun Times.

Last year was one of Chicago’s deadliest years in a quarter-century, with the city seeing 836 homicides. In total, there were at least 4,300 gunshot victims in 2021 according to data from the Chicago Police Department, which is up from the 2,800 people shot in 2018.

According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Illinois is ranked around the middle when it comes to firearm mortality by state. The death rate in Illinois is 14.1 deaths per 100,000 people. Top-ranked Mississippi has a 28.6 death rate.

Chicago employs much stricter gun laws than what the state of Illinois implements. Chicago’s laws ban the possession of certain semi-automatic firearms that the city defines as assault weapons and certain firearms accessories.

Last year, the state’s Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker signed legislation that criminalizes the private sale of guns without the buyer going through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) before the sale. The legislation comes into effect in 2024.

Whether the NICS will have any effect on reducing gun crimes will remain to be seen. A 2015 study by the University of Chicago Crime Lab showed that inmates locked up for gun crimes avoid getting their firearms from sources that require background checks, federal or otherwise.