More than a hundred people in Chicago were shot, 19 fatally, during a holiday weekend marred by an eye-popping eruption of violence — as the city’s mayor called to punish those who make a “choice to kill” and said there “will be consequences” for the gunmen.
The shootings — which began in earnest on the Fourth of July and claimed the lives of several kids — have stunned a city that had previously seen both homicides and nonfatal shootings drop compared to last year, according to the Chicago Tribune.
One of the shootings — a daytime assault in Greater Grand Crossing on Thursday — left a woman, her niece and her 8-year-old son dead after bullets tore through the windows of their South Side home, NBC 5 said.
On Monday, Mayor Brandon Johnson said his administration wants federal money to address the root causes of the violence that’s torn the Windy City’s neighborhoods asunder.
But he also demanded punishment for those who have made the “choice to kill,” the Tribune said.
“This is a choice. It’s a choice to kill. It’s a choice to kill women. A choice to kill children. A choice to kill the elderly,” the mayor said. “These are choices that the offenders made and they calculated.”
Larry Snelling, superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, echoed the mayor’s sentiments during a police headquarters press conference.
“What we really have to think about is the brazenness and the behavior of those who could walk into a home and see children and women and open fire,” Snelling said.
“It’s an amazing thing to think that, as a human being, that you could walk in and do something like that, that you could see a child and open fire.”
Gun violence often peaks around Independence Day, which marks the hottest part of the year in the city of 2.6 million on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Last year, the Windy City recorded 120 homicides and 482 people wounded in shootings that happened between July 1 and Aug. 31, 2023, the Tribune said.
Those casualties accounted for more than a fifth of the city’s gun violence victims that year.
Chicago had seen about 1,105 shootings so far this year as of June 24 — a 6% decrease from 2023 and a 12% reduction from two years ago, according to CNN.
Ahead of the holiday weekend, the police brass had canceled vacation days for a number of Chicago cops to “maximize presence and ensure prompt incident response,” the outlet said.
The city also activated an emergency services assistance center and held a community rally Friday afternoon to “promote bonding, support, and healing,” according to the mayor.
But none of that stopped the violence, which included nearly 45 shootings Friday and four mass shootings that began in the early hours of July 4.
In all, 109 people were shot.
Police officials didn’t say if they had any suspects in custody following the bloody weekend.
Much of the gunfire happened in neighborhoods often plagued by violence, which Johnson said have suffered from “generations of disinvestment,” the Tribune said.
Snelling added that big block parties and summer barbeques make the city even harder to police, as people who have been drinking all day begin to fight, then brawl, then shoot.
“People who’ve been together all day, they come together as a group, they’ve been drinking, tempers flare and people decide that they’re going to air out their differences through violence,” Snelling said.
Meanwhile, Johnson said authorities need to “ensure that we are holding every single individual accountable for the pain and trauma and the torment that they have caused in this city.”
“There will be consequences,” he said. “There will be consequences for the violence. We will not let criminal activity ruin and harm our city.”
