At least nine people were fatally shot and 34 people were shot in separate shooting incidents across Chicago starting on Friday and ending on Monday morning, according to police in updates on Aug. 3.
Among those shot and killed was a 9-year-old boy, Janari Ricks, who was playing outside when gunfire erupted, police said.
“It’s just crazy. My boy, he’s gone; that was my inspiration, that was my truth,” Janari’s father Raymond Ricks said, according to ABC7. “He wanted to play basketball. He was just a basketball fanatic.”
Chicago Police Department Chief of Operations Brian McDermott described the boy as “an unintended target, and we don’t know who the intended target was.” He was gunned down when a suspect walked up to a crowd of people on 900 North Cambridge Avenue, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
A 17-year-old boy, Caleb Reed, was also shot and killed over the weekend in a separate shooting, officials said. Officers discovered him lying on the sidewalk at around 1 p.m. on Friday. He was pronounced dead two days later on Sunday at St. Francis Hospital, the ABC affiliate station reported.
A report from the police department found that July saw a 139 percent increase in murders compared to July 2019, reported ABC7.
“We care. we want the city to know that we are here, as a motorcycle community we are tired of watching kids die,” community activist Dawn Valenti told the news outlet.
George Bady, the head of Stop The Violence, said children are scared.
“They are very scared; they are scared to come outside, they are scared to sit in their front rooms now, some scared to go outside because they might not make it back home,” Bady said.
President Donald Trump in July announced that federal agents would be sent to Chicago and other cities as part of Operation Legend, which will seek to curb the increase in crime in cities. Following the George Floyd-related protests in May and June, a number of metropolitan areas have seen spikes in crime and shootings as animus towards police officers and departments has grown.
Data released by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) last month revealed that most of the guns recovered in Illinois are from Illinois. The numbers show that 5,337 guns recovered in Illinois were traced and sourced as coming from the state itself.
It came as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot told CNN in late July that guns are being sourced out-of-state in an apparent contradiction to the ATF report.
“Our gun problem is related to the fact that we have too many illegal guns on our streets, 60 percent of which come from states outside of Illinois,” she said.