In the latest mass shooting in Chicago, fourteen people, including children ages 3, 11, and 13, were shot in a 3-second drive-by attack on Halloween night, police said.
Seven women and four men ranging in age from 31 to 56 were also shot. According to Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown, two people in a car opened fire at a crowd standing at an intersection for a vigil. Balloons were released around the gathering.
Alderman Jason Ervin commented, “It’s heartbreaking that people go out to memorialize someone and then become victims.”
“Hold off on hyperbole right now,” Brown told reporters asking how many people had been shot. “Right now, people are in there getting treated, some may be fighting for their lives. Let’s right now treat this in the most urgent way, we’re trying to find an offender.”
“We picked up another girl, a little girl, about 13, and we brought her to that ambulance,” an eyewitness told FOX 32 Chicago. “But the ambulance driver said, ‘No, we can’t bring her in because you have people worse.’ So we just sat her on the bumper.”
The bystander added that one small girl had a bullet wound under her knee.
Six victims were transported to Mount Sinai Hospital, four to Stroger Hospital, two to Loyola University Medical Center and two to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, CBS News reported.
“It’s over by three seconds,” Brown said. “The car’s pulling out after driving by and shooting randomly into the crowd. We do not have any motive. … We always worry about retaliation obviously, but we don’t know enough about this, whether it involved a gang conflict or some personal conflict yet, but as soon as we know we’ll share that with the public. And obviously we’re deploying extra police resources in the area to make sure that we can prevent any retaliation if that’s something that’s real.”
The shootings were the worst in the Chicago area since March 2021, when fifteen people were shot and two killed in Greater Grand Crossing; in July 2020 fifteen people were shot in Gresham.
Roughly halfway through 2022, on July 1 the Chicago Police Department reported that there had been 310 homicides and 1,255 shootings since January 1.
Through late September, Chicago’s homicide rate was 18.4 people killed for every 100,000 residents. Los Angeles’ homicide rate was 7.5 people killed per 100,000; New York’s homicide rate was 3.6 people killed per 100,000.
