(Mekhi James, Sincere Gaston and Lena Marie Nunez were shot to death in Chicago last week (courtesy of Legal Help Firm))
Gun violence on the streets of Chicago claimed the lives of three minors, with two others injured in the chaos, only in the past week alone.
Ten-year-old girl Lena Marie Núñez was killed when a stray bullet smashed through the window and hit her in the head while she was inside her second-floor family apartment in the 3500 block of West Dickens on Saturday night. The charred glass injured her 8-year-old cousin, police said.
That same day, a 20-month-old baby, Sincere Gaston, was shot dead in broad daylight while tied to a car seat with his mother in the Englewood neighborhood. Hours earlier, a 17-year-old boy died of a gunshot wound after being involved in a fight while in a “large crowd,” authorities said.
(Lena Marie Núñez was hit by a stray bullet at her home on Saturday night (Legal Aid Company))
“Too many times they kill children,” Police Chief Fred Waller said at a press conference after the 20-month-old’s death. “It seems like it was yesterday, and it was actually last Saturday, I was in front of you talking about a 3 year old … When is this going to stop?”
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But just two hours after the murder of Núñez, another 8-year-old girl in the West Englewood area, also inside a house, according to local media reports, when a random bullet entered the window and grazed her head. She was immediately transferred to the Comer Children’s Hospital, where she is said to be in “normal condition.”
Sincere Gastón was tragically killed by gunfire in Chicago last week
(Legal aid firm)
The incidents remain under investigation.
Furthermore, the tragic shooting streak occurs less than a week after 3-year-old Mekhi James was killed on the West Side of Chicago, the victim of a shooting.
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According to an analysis of crime statistics by the Chicago Tribune, last week was the most violent in Chicago since at least 2012, with some 106 people shot, 14 of them fatally.
“As of last Sunday, the city experienced a more than 25 percent increase in the number of homicides, reaching 295, which is 60 more than in the same period last year,” the publication wrote. “Ninety-six of them occurred during a 28-day period that covered most of June, the statistics show.”
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Julio Rivera, editorial director of the online crime and political publication Reactionary Times, said crime in Chicago is reaching deeply troubling levels.
“Overall crime in May 2020 versus May 2019, 2020 has been a particularly violent year as the 1,127 shooting victims through May 2020 represent a 30 percent increase compared to 2019,” he told Fox News. “It has only gotten worse in June, culminating in Chicago’s most violent weekend since 2012 between 6 pm on Friday, June 19 and 11:59 pm on Sunday, June 21, in which at least 106 people were shot, with at least 14 deaths. “
But with the July 4 weekend pending, notoriously the worst days for violence in Windy City, the worst may yet to come.
But especially tragic in the city’s prolonged armed violence are the young victims caught in the crossfire.
On one hand, prominent Chicago activist Diane Latiker has erected a shrine in memory of Chicago children killed by bullets, adorned with hundreds of names etched in stones and the jarring reality that there are now more names to engrave.
“It’s like I’m taking a piece of your soul,” Latiker told the local Fox 32 affiliate. “Because whoever is on that stone, someone loved them.”
