Painted with blood “the long weekend of the national holiday” in Chicago

Painted with blood “the long weekend of the national holiday” in Chicago

A total of 14 people were killed and 74 others injured by bullets fired in Chicago during the prolonged weekend of the US national holiday, which is often tarnished by violent incidents, the police of this metropolis of this American North announced on Monday.

Most of the victims were killed in separate episodes. A man in his forties was killed by a neighbor because he had turned up the music too much; two young men were killed by a gunman riding in a passing car while in a park; 19-year-old found dead on sidewalk…

At least five minors, including two girls aged 5 and 6, are among the injured, as are two police officers. who tried to break up a rally in the western part of the big city, where the violence is endemic.

“Very often – and this is tragic – the target is someone else, but the bullets hit an innocent child,” David Brown, the Chicago police chief, told a news conference yesterday.

The celebrations of July 4, the day the United States declared independence in 1776, have become a macabre tradition of being marred by gun violence in Chicago, the country’s third-largest city where gangs are gangrene.

In 2020, 15 people were killed in Chicago during that long weekend, during which people take to the streets or parks to celebrate, grill or admire fireworks.

Hoping to change things this year, a group of women camped, prayed and fasted in a parking lot in her neighborhood. «We have more and more police officers and more and more violence – the only way to solve the problem is for us to take it on“, Explained Jacqueline Reed, 71 years old.

The rest of the US cities are not left untouched by this scourge. According to another census by the Gun Violence Archive, at least 150 people have been killed by gunfire across the country since Friday.

More than 19,000 firearms homicides were recorded in the United States in 2020, a year marked by a resurgence of killings in all major American cities.

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