Despite 30 shooting victims every weekend for the last few weeks in Chicago being 30 too many, the number represented a downturn in victims compared the outrageous numbers that were seen over weekends in the spring and summer of this year. Even more sad, that trend seems to be over.
At least 10 people were killed and another 42 were wounded across the Chicagoland area over the weekend. This is a sharp increase from the previous weekend, which saw at least six people murdered and another 22 wounded.
A 4-year-old boy was reportedly among those wounded this past weekend.
Here are the names and ages of those who lost their lives over the weekend, according to the Chicago Sun-Times (Note: The third person listed was a robber who was shot by a 77-year-old man with a concealed carry license. Nonetheless, that death counts in the Sun-Times numbers.):
Bernard Peterson, Age Unknown
Reginald Benson, 29
Karl Washington, 36
As for the year-to-date totals for Chicago weekend shootings, 280 people have been murdered and another 1,651 have been wounded in Chicago in 2021. The Chicago Tribune, which keeps a tracker of all shooting victims in Chicago, have apparently given up keeping track as they still haven’t updated their numbers in over two months. But, they reported that — as of July 7 — 2,021 people have been shot in Chicago this year. That number is 164 more than at the same point in 2020, which saw the second most shooting victims in the last 10 years of tracking data.