*Beginning at about midnight Saturday, at least 40 people were shot across the city of Chicago, four fatally, in a period of less than seven hours as gunmen fired on groups at a block party, after a funeral, on a front porch and in other gatherings, according to authorities.
The rash of gunfire comes as tens of thousands of concertgoers filled downtown for Lollapalooza, which drew heightened security and a large police presence following the country’s deadliest mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival last year, reports the Chicago Tribune.
Most of the violence early Sunday took place on the West Side, where 25 people were shot in separate attacks between midnight and 6:50 a.m., according to police figures.
The largest shooting, which injured eight people, happened in the South Side’s Gresham neighborhood as a group, including a 14-year-old girl, was standing in a courtyard just before 12:40 a.m. The crowd had gathered after attending a funeral repass, said Fred Waller, Chicago police chief of patrol.
During a Sunday news conference, Waller voiced frustration at gang members whom he blamed for taking advantage of large summer crowds to use as cover to take revenge. The gang members do not fear repercussions from the law, Waller said.
“They take advantage of that opportunity and they shoot into a crowd, no matter who they hit,” Waller said.
Below, more details via the Chicago Tribune:
During an annual block party in the West Side’s Lawndale neighborhood, people in lime green T-shirts gathered on sidewalks and in streets after a 13-year-old boy was shot twice in the right arm around midnight. A car drove up to the gathering and two people got out and opened fire into the crowd, hitting two more teenagers and a 25-year-old man.
“If they shoot you, they don’t even run,” said one man watching police work the scene. “They just walk away, they ain’t trying to run.”
The youngest person hurt was an 11-year-old boy shot in the left leg on the West Side — also in the Lawndale neighborhood. He was on the sidewalk with five other people, including a 14-year-old boy, when two men came up to them and started shooting, police said.
Although investigations were just getting underway, Waller said many of the shootings appeared to be targeted attacks.
Resources at local hospitals were taxed as the wounded and their families poured in. Access to Stroger Hospital was tightened. At one point, more than 200 people had converged on the hospital. Mount Sinai Hospital had to stop accepting new emergency cases for a while.
Earlier Sunday, police said there were 47 people shot, five killed between 9 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. Sunday. Later in the day, however, police counted 34 shooting victims and five homicides in the same 24-hour period
About 15 of those shot were in their teens.
In the attack in Gresham, seven of those shot were 21 or younger.
During one 2½-hour early morning period, 25 people were shot in five multiple-injury shootings, police said.
One of the dead was 17-year-old Jahnae Patterson, who was shot in the face. Her family said she and a friend had gone to a block party and were walking to use a bathroom when they encountered two young men who engaged in a shootout.
“My baby just left the house. Twenty minutes later, I get a call saying my baby got shot,” Patterson’s mother, Tanika Humphries, said.
The fifth of nine children and the first girl in the family, Patterson had her entire life ahead of her, her mother said.
“My baby did not deserve this,” she said. “My baby wasn’t the type to hang out. She was in school. She worked. She did everything she was supposed to do as a teenager. And then coward (expletive) took it all away from us.”
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