51 people shot over Memorial Day weekend in Chicago, the most violent in five years
About half of those shot were on the West Side, most of them in a single police district where there were two mass shootings. At least 23 people were shot on the South Side and four downtown.
By Sun-Times Wire
Updated May 31, 2022, 5:04pm CEST
Family members watch as Chicago police investigate in the 5700 block of South Carpenter Street, where a man was shot to death early Sunday during a party on the Englewood neighborhood block on the South Side.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Chicago experienced its most violent Memorial Day weekend in five years — 9 killed, 42 wounded — despite stepped up police patrols and a focus on neighborhood programs that city officials hoped would provide peaceful alternatives.
About half of those shot were on the West Side, most of them in a single police district, the 11th, where there were two mass shootings on Sunday. On the South Side, at least 23 people were shot. And downtown, where there has been a spike in shootings all year, four people were hit by gunfire.
The weekend was the most violent since 2017, when seven people were killed and 45 people were wounded, according to Chicago police data. The year before, 69 people had been shot over the long holiday weekend.
This past weekend’s toll is sharply higher than last year, when three people were killed and 34 others were wounded.
Police work the scene where five people were shot near an elementary school May 29, 2022 on the West Side.
Police work the scene where five people were shot near an elementary school May 29, 2022 on the West Side.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
The Chicago Police Department had canceled days off over the weekend, but Police Superintendent David Brown was vague last Friday about the numbers of additional police officers assigned to work.
He would only say the safety plan included foot, bike and roving patrols; traffic safety, DUI saturation and carjacking task force missions; and gang and gun and organized retail theft investigations.
At the same news conference, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said weekend programs in 15 high-crime neighborhoods — including music-and-game-filled “kickbacks” with DJs — would be held later into the night to fill gaps pinpointed in conversations with young people in those neighborhoods.
On Saturday, faith leaders led a march for peace down Michigan Avenue. “There will be no silence till we end the violence,” a group of about 50 people chanted as they marched down the Mag Mile to Millennium Park.
carpenter_052922_06.jpg
A woman watches as Chicago police investigate in the 5700 block of South Carpenter Street, where a man was shot to death during a party.
Ashlee Rezin/Sun-Times
Many of the weekend shootings occurred in neighborhoods long troubled by gun violence.
In Lawndale, five people were wounded after gunmen opened fire on a crowd marking the anniversary of another teen’s killing. A 16-year-old girl was among the wounded in the shooting early Sunday morning in the 800 block of South Karlov Avenue. Shell casings and at least 97 evidence markers could be seen in the street outside Daniel Webster Elementary School.
Later Sunday, a man was killed and four others wounded, including a gunman, during a domestic incident in Humboldt Park. The shooting led to a standoff with a police SWAT team. A gunman, 23, was arrested over an hour later and treated for a gunshot wound, police said.
Other fatal shootings from the weekend between 5 p.m. Friday and 5 a.m. Tuesday:
Three men were wounded, one fatally, in a shooting Monday in Burnside on the South Side. They were near a sidewalk about 7:45 p.m. in the 1300 block of East 93rd Street when someone opened fire, police said. One man, 25, was shot in the chest and died at Trinity Hospital. Another man, 26, was also shot in the chest and taken to the same hospital in critical condition. The third man, 27, was shot in his body and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center. His condition was not released.
Chicago police and SWAT officers investigate in the 4400 block of West Walton Street where an alleged gunman barricaded himself in a building after one man was killed and three other people were wounded in a shooting Sunday night in West Humboldt Park on the West Side. The suspect also suffered a gunshot wound in the incident, thought to be domestic, but officers didn’t fire any shots, police said.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2022/5/29/23146412/chicago-shootings-memorial-day-weekend