By Eric Mack
A violent July Fourth weekend featured at least 118 people shot in Chicago and New York City combined, according to reports.
The historically violent weekend for Chicago saw 92 shot, including at least 16 fatalities, the most violent weekend of the year thus far, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
New York City saw 26 people shot, including two fatalities, Fox News reported.
Chicago’s violence also featured two police officers getting shot, one in the foot and one in the thigh, but their injuries were not life threatening.
“There’s been a lot of large crowd gatherings tonight, a lot of celebratory fireworks going off, kind of spontaneous,” Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown told the Sun-Times. “They were dispersing a crowd when they heard shots and felt pain.”
That violence comes after Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot spoke with City Council and law enforcement leaders in her city to address a crime surge.
“This is a very challenging weekend, historically, going back decades,” Lightfoot told reporters, suggesting the “six hours of questioning” in a City Council meeting was untimely and potentially taking away from Superintendent Brown’s crime fighting for the dangers of the weekend ahead.
“Every single day the men and women of our police department are under danger,” she added. “We’ve seen an unprecedented level of people shooting at the police, last year and still this year.
“Yes, we’ve made progress this year. Not enough. No one can be satisfied until we see dramatic drops in homicides and in shootings.”
Among this weekend’s Chicago shootings, were a 12-year-old girl and 13-year-old boy among several others injured in a Washington Park shooting early Monday morning.
The violence was prevalent in other cities around the country, too, according to reports:
- A large brawl in Atlanta among 50 kids resulted in at least one death, a 14-year-old boy and a 17-year-old were arrested for possession of two guns, according to Fox-5 Atlanta.
- Eight people in Texas, were wounded but in stable condition early Sunday when a person began shooting toward groups of people near a Fort Worth car wash and multiple people returned fire, police said.
- Two were killed and three wounded in downtown Cincinnati when a suspect opened fire during a fireworks display.
- An 18-year-old woman was shot and killed Sunday in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and a 30-year-old man and girl, 14, were wounded in another shooting.