Blood flooded the streets of Chicago on Labour Day weekend as the violence wracking the Windy City refused to ebb for traditional barbecues, marches and family gatherings.
According to cops, a staggering 43 people were shot with eight making their final journey to the city morgue.
The bloodshed follows on the heels of a comparatively peaceful August. The month saw the lowest number of shootings since August 2011.
Labour Day weekend violence also triggered a political shootout between Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and the Second City’s Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
Cruz tweeted: “Gun control doesn’t work. Look at Chicago. Disarming law-abiding citizens isn’t the answer.”
Lightfoot fired back: “60 % of illegal firearms recovered in Chicago come from outside IL — mostly from states dominated by coward Republicans like you who refuse to enact common-sense gun legislation. Keep our name out of your mouth.”
The fireworks aren’t helping the dead, double the tally from 2018.
Cops say the last person killed was at 1:15 a.m. Tuesday morning on the South Side. There, officers found a man, 32, with a gunshot wound to the head.
Dovantae Jackson, 15, was shot and killed early Sunday. He had been shot in the leg and back and was dead at the scene, steps away from his home.
Twenty minutes later, a man was shot to death and a woman wounded at a party on the city’s South Side. Someone began shooting around 2:45 a.m. giving the Grim Reaper his late-night snack.
He was 27 years old and DOA.
An hour later, a drive-by shooting took the life of another man. Christopher Smith, 37, was shot multiple times and pronounced dead on the scene.
On Saturday, two other South Side men were shot to death and three others injured as they sat on the porch of a home. Both men were hit in the chest and pronounced dead in hospital.
On Chicago’s West Side, Angel Perez, 18, was shot in the chest and taken to Stroger Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Willie Coker was the first to die.
He was hanging around outside with a group of pals when gunshots came flying in. Coker, 42, was unresponsive with multiple gunshot wounds to the chest.
Coker was pronounced dead in hospital. Around 29 others were wounded during the weekend of violence.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2019
