A 7-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy were among the shot dead on Saturday night when Chicago erupted in armed violence on Independence Day.
The night included two attacks in which each had eight victims, the Chicago Tribune reported.
The girl, identified by her family as Natalie Wallace, was outside her grandmother’s house at a July 4 party in the city’s Austin neighborhood around 7 p.m. when a vehicle stopped and three men got out and started. to shoot indiscriminately, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
The girl was shot in the head and was pronounced dead after she was rushed to a hospital, police said, according to Chicago FOX 32.
A 32-year-old man who was shot during the same attack was in good condition, FOX 32 reported.
“Tonight, a 7-year-old girl in Austin joined a list of teens and children whose hopes and dreams were shattered by the barrel of a gun,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot wrote on Twitter. “We cannot fall asleep with this. We are making progress in decreasing the shooting, but we have to do better, each one of us. “
A 34-year-old woman, a 31-year-old man and a 20-year-old man were also killed earlier on Saturday, WLS-TV reported.
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The 14-year-old boy was killed in the city’s Englewood neighborhood in an attack that left three other people dead and four wounded, including children 11 and 15 years old, the Tribune reported.
Four men had approached a meeting and started shooting. They fled and have not been arrested, the newspaper reported.
Saturday was the third consecutive weekend that a boy under the age of 10 was shot dead. Last weekend, Sincere A. Gaston, 1, was killed while riding in his mother’s car and the previous weekend, 3-year-old Mekhi James was fatally shot while in his stepfather’s SUV.
The city deployed 1,200 additional police officers who the mayor said would work with violence prevention groups and focus on taking illegal weapons off the street over the holiday weekend, according to the Sun-Times.
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“It’s not just about the police department. Not just about the fire department. Not just about elected officials,” Lightfoot said, according to WLS. “We all must accept our notion of community and think about what we can do, each of us in our own way, so that our communities are safe, healthy and vibrant.”
The two weekends leading up to this year’s long vacation ended with a combined total of 111 people shot in Chicago, 24 fatally.
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Investigations are ongoing.
