**UPDATE**
The amount of destruction a few more hours in Chicago can bring is uncanny. In a final tally, the Chicago-Tribune is reporting that 82 people were shot and 14 killed over the past weekend.
Looks like they bested their 2013 holiday weekend after all.
Unfortunately, no 2014 holiday weekend would be complete without a round of Chicago violence and the city dubbed “Chiraq” didn’t fail to live up to its nickname.
At least 36 people were reported to have been shot since the 4th of July weekend kicked off this past Thursday. In typical chaotic fashion, the incidents happened all across the city’s map.
Reports Chicago Tribune:
Chicago was hit with a burst of gun violence on the Fourth of July, with at least 21 people shot, one of them fatally, during an 11-hour stretch from Friday evening into Saturday morning, according to police.
That brought to 36 the number of people who have been shot in the city since the long holiday weekend began Thursday afternoon, when two women were hit by gunfire as they sat on a porch just a block from Garfield Park on the West Side.
A 30-year-old man was fatally shot in the Clearking neighborhood about 1 a.m.
Joel Bentley was pronounced dead at 5:46 a.m. at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn after being shot in the parking lot of a Walgreen’s at 63rd Street and Austin Avenue about 1 a.m.
The man was shot in the stomach and taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center, police said. Police believe the man was throwing gang signs and taking pictures when he was shot. Bentley lived in the 5000 block of South Keating Avenue, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
The holiday shootings have stretched across the city but have been concentrated in the South and West sides. The Englewood and Harrison districts have both seen a handful of people shot over the last two days, and there have been shootings as far south as the Altgeld Gardens neighborhood at the edge of the city to the Rogers Park neighborhood bordering Evanston.
On the bright side (if there was ever such a thing for a story like this) is the news pales in comparison to the 2013 Chicago 4th of July weekend 2013 where 72 people were shot including a 7-year-old boy.
Check out the gallery of a few of the crime scenes. Gunland is alive and well.
—
Photos: NBC Chicago, FOX 32
