Chicago War Zone

Source: Chicago Tribune

At least 43 people shot in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend. 'Unacceptable state of affairs,' new mayor says

by Alice Yin and Jeremy Gorner | May 28, 2019

Photographs of Chicago's violence over the 2019 Memorial Day weekend. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Chicago Tribune)

At least 43 people were shot, seven fatally, in Chicago over the Memorial Day weekend even as severe storms kept people indoors and 1,200 extra officers patrolled the streets.

The toll was slightly higher than last year’s Memorial Day weekend, when 39 people were shot, seven of them fatally, according to shooting data kept by the Tribune. In 2017, 45 people were shot, seven of them killed. And in 2016, 71 people shot, six of them fatally, in one of the most violent Memorial Day weekends in recent years.

"That is just an unacceptable state of affairs," Mayor Lori Lightfoot told reporters after a Monday ceremony at a Grant Park monument to commemorate the nation’s war dead.

The new mayor said she rode with officers Saturday night and responded with them to a shooting on the South Side. She also spoke of the frequency of email notifications she receives alerting her to shootings.

"I certainly knew that before, but to see it graphically depicted is quite shocking and says that we've got a long way to go as a city," she said. "This is not a law enforcement-only challenge. It's a challenge for all of us in city government. It's a challenge for us in communities to dig down deeper and ask ourselves what we can do to step up to stem the violence."

Repeating a main talking point of police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, Lightfoot said a critical part of the city’s strategy is getting illegal guns off the streets by focusing on gun traffickers, felons carrying guns and those who have their firearm ownership cards revoked.

Sunday saw the worst of the weekend violence, with 18 people shot. Eight of them were wounded in two shootings just five hours apart on the same block on the Near West Side.

Around 1:30 a.m., John Benford, 27, was killed and two others were wounded at the ABLA Homes in the 1300 block of West Hastings Street. Around 6 a.m., five more people were shot on the same block, two of them fatally. Killed were Antonio Green, 28, and Martez Cox, 27.

In the second shooting, Tevin Covens, 25, was shot in the face by Green, who also shot and killed Cox, after Cox fired a TEC-9 machine pistol into the air, according to police. Covens, also armed, opened fire on Green, killing him, police said.

But shots fired by Covens also hit two women, according to chief police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.

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Related:

42 shots fired in gun battle that left 2 dead on Near West Side, prosecutors said; 2 men charged


Shithole called Chicago:

HeyJackass!: Chicago Crime 2019 | Chicago Murder, Crime & Mayhem


Look at the death statistics for Chicago in 2019. These are fucking Baghdad statistics:

Shot & Killed: 180 
Shot & Wounded: 725 
Total Shot: 905 
Total Homicides: 196

Is it any wonder Chicago is a war zone:

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