More than a dozen people shot, two dead at party in Chicago
The wounded are reportedly listed in good to serious or critical condition at hospitals.
Violence erupted at a party on Chicago‘s South Side early Sunday morning after gunfire broke out and left more than a dozen people shot and multiple dead, according to the Chicago Fire Department.
At about 4:40 a.m., a fight disrupted the festivities at South Side Think Tank, a business in the city’s Park Manor neighborhood, police said, per Chicago Tribune. At least 15 people, ranging in age from 20 to 44 years old, were struck by gunfire. Two people were pronounced dead.
Officials claim four guns were found at the scene. Some of the wounded are reportedly listed in critical condition at hospitals.
Photos from the scene show balloons outside the business where the party occurred and a pool of blood on the sidewalk near the door. Police are following up on “several different” leads as detectives investigate the crime.
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The last time this number of people were shot in a single day occurred last July when 15 people were shot outside a Gresham funeral home, none of the victims died, as Chicago Sun-Times reports.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a Twitter post at the time, “When a person picks up a gun, we suffer as a city. This cannot be who we are.”
“Too many guns are on our streets and in the hands of people who should never possess them,” Lightfoot continued. “These individuals will be held accountable. I ask that anyone with information on this incident please come forward or submit a tip anonymously at http://cpdtip.com.”
That same month, nearly 80 people were shot in the city and 15 of them died over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, theGrio reported. Twelve of the shooting victims were minors, and two children were killed. Then-President Donald Trump addressed the shootings in Chicago and New York, noting in a tweet, “Federal Government ready, willing and able to help, if asked!”
When Trump announced plans to send as many as 150 federal agents to Chicago in efforts to reduce violence in the city, Lightfoot pushed back, theGRIO reported. She instead said that Trump could increase resources for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives department and provide funding for prosecutors.
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“We don’t need federal agents without any insignia taking people off the streets and holding them, I think, unlawfully,” Lightfoot said in a statement last July. She sent the President a four-page letter saying that “despite his misplaced and incendiary rhetoric,” she will take him at his word that he wants to help her city. When Lightfoot appeared as one of the first guests on the premiere of The ReidOut hosted by Joy Reid on MSNBC, she said, “we’re not going to have tyranny in the city of Chicago.”
In 2013, a mass shooting in the city wounded 13 people, including a 3-year-old boy. Last December, six people were injured after gunfire broke out at a party in the Burnside neighborhood on the South Side.
Officers have reportedly responded to nearly 400 shooting incidents across the city through March 7, compared to this same time frame last year when there were 301 shooting incidents, according to police statistics, per Fox 23 Chicago.
*theGRIO’s Biba Adams contributed to this report.
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