Another violent weekend was recorded in Chicago last weekend, resulting in 15 fatalities and 59 injuries, a report said, EDNews.net reports citing Fox News.
One of the fatalities included a 1-year-old boy who was fatally shot and his mother injured in a shooting Saturday afternoon, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. Sincere Gaston, the boy, was hit by a bullet in the chest on his way home from a laundromat with his mother, who was also grazed with a bullet.
Chicago Police Chief Fred Waller told Fox 6 Now that the family is “going through tremendous emotions and tremendous strife.” Authorities do not believe the shooting was random.
There is a $25,000 reward in the shooting by a new group called “I’m Telling, Don’t Shoot.” NBC Chicago reported that the group is made up of local business owners.
“I am absolutely ecstatic that these business owners are standing behind me to support this initiative. We need to find this killer,” Earley Walker, the owner of W&W Towing, said.
The Sun-Times reported that four children were among the 59 shot in the city. Three of them died.
A 10-year-old girl was also fatally shot when she was struck by a stray bullet inside her uncle’s home in Logan Square. Preliminary information showed the gunfire came from a group of males who had been shooting at each other on the block, he said. No one was in custody Sunday.
“They just can’t believe that she went over there to her uncle’s house and with her other relatives and she was just waiting on her dad to come pick her up and then this incident happened,” Andrew Holmes, a community activist, told ABC 7 Chicago.
Experts say non-suicidal gun deaths are on track to top last year. The news comes as the American public is dealing with the stress of the coronavirus pandemic and economic fallout, more awareness of racial injustice and policing, and deeper political divisions in a presidential election year.
“The pain of losing a child never goes away,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Saturday on Twitter. “As a mother, I am tired of the funerals. I am tired of burying our children.”