Sixty-five people were shot in Chicago over Labor Day weekend, including 13 who were killed.
The tragically long list of victims included Crystal Myer, who was nine months pregnant at the time, according to the Chicago Tribune. The report stated Myer was shot in the abdomen on the same block that another person had been shot and killed only 20 hours earlier.
Allen Smith, a retired pastor, was shot and killed outside a senior nursing home on Sunday evening, the report added.
According to the article, Labor Day Weekend proved to be the deadliest of the holiday weekends so far this year in the city, which has some of the strictest gun laws and highest murder rates in the nation. From the report:
The Labor Day weekend was the deadliest of the three holiday weekends this summer. The Memorial Day weekend saw 69 shot, six of them fatally, and the Fourth of July weekend recorded 66 shot, five of them fatal.
According to the Chicago Tribune, “Police attributed the 11th-hour surge to retaliatory acts, often involving gangs, after a weekend of parties and tense encounters.”
Homicides in Chicago this year have risen to levels not seen since the 1990s, when killings peaked at more than 900 annually. The 90 homicides in August tied for the most the city had seen in a single month since June 1996. In the worst previous month — July 1993 — 99 people were slain.