Chicago Weekend Shootings See 142% Increase: At Least 4 Dead, Another 42 Wounded

Nick Kangadis | May 4, 2020
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What a difference a week makes. In this case, that difference is a very sad reality. Just a week ago, I wrote about the number of Chicago weekend shooting victims being down for the first time in weeks. Unfortunately, it looks like criminals in the "Second City" were trying to break a high score.

An incredibly dismaying four people were killed and another 42 were wounded in shootings across the Chicagoland area this past weekend. This is up from the previous weekend's totals, which saw at least three die and another 16 wounded. 

To put that in context, this past weekend's shootings represent a 142 percent increase in shooting victims as compared to the previous weekend.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, 21 of the weekend's shooting victims were shot during a seven hour period from late Saturday night into Sunday morning, including five teenagers.

Here are the names of this past weekend fatalities:

Gabriel Perez, 35

Unidentified Male, 36

Eric Chapman Jr., 30

Unidentified Male, 27

All of this comes just days after the Chicago Police Department (CPD) released numbers that claim the city's overall crime has dropped 30 percent in April, compared to April 2019. However, the number of shooting increased 6.7 percent during the same period, as the Chicago Sun-Times also reported.

"There have been 625 shootings and 154 murders in Chicago so far this year, police said," Sam Kelly wrote on May 1 for the Sun-Times. "Those are climbs of about 16 [percent] and 8 percent, respectively, through the same time period last year."

Including this weekend's shooting numbers to the 2020 count for Chicago weekend shootings, at least 58 people have been killed and another 324 have been wounded.

The Chicago Tribune, who keeps track of all shootings in Chicago regardless of the day of the week reported that 715 people have been the victims of shootings in Chicago as of April 26th. That number is 73 more than at the same point in 2019.

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