CHICAGO (CBS) — A string of mass shootings Sunday morning helped contribute to the bloodiest weekend of the year in Chicago, leaving at least 12 people killed and 54 others wounded in shootings since Friday evening. Police said there were a total of 33 shooting incidents from 6 p.m. Friday through midnight Sunday night, with 66 total victims, including 12 murders. Fourteen of the shooting victims were juveniles, including two who died. Authorities said dozens were shot in six mass shootings during a seven-hour span early Sunday, with at least four people shot in each of those attacks. Those six shootings alone left a combined three people dead and 28 others wounded. The pain of dozens of families echoed through the parking lot of Stroger Hospital on Sunday, as more than a dozen gunshot victims were treated there after the spate of mass shootings; some needing comfort and help to stay upright, others so stricken by grief they could no longer stand. Police said from 10 a.m. Saturday until 10 a.m. Sunday, at least 34 people were shot, five of them fatally. In a hastily called news conference Sunday night, after reporters sought answers about the weekend’s bloodshed, Chicago Police Department said many of the incidents were the result of gang conflicts. Chief of Patrol Fred Waller blamed gang members who often target one specific person in a group, but end up wounding several innocent bystanders. “When it’s very hot outside, we have multiple areas with crowds. … An offender, or some type of rival gang sees a large group of people,” he said. “They take advantage of that opportunity, and they shoot into a crowd, no matter who they hit.” Waller said, despite the recent violence, shootings are down 30 percent this year compared to 2017. “We won’t be defeated. We won’t be overrun by that small group, that small element that’s committing these reckless acts. We will not. I promise you that we will not be defeated,” he said. The gunfire continued Sunday night into Monday morning. Police said a group of people was standing in front of a home near 27th and Dearborn in the Bronzeville neighborhood shortly before 8 p.m., when a man jumped out of a car, fired several shots, and hopped back in the vehicle. When the dust settled, three people had been shot, including a 24-year-old man who was killed. About four hours later, another man was killed early Monday morning, when a person wearing a ski mask walked up to a man and a woman standing in front of a home near 130th and Drexel, and shot them both. A 50-year-old man was shot in the head, and was pronounced dead at the scene. A 55-year-old woman was shot in the leg, and was stabilized at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn. Police Supt. Eddie Johnson planned to hold an 11 a.m. news conference on Monday to discuss the weekend’s violent crime. The spate of shootings this weekend started only a day after a group of about 150 anti-violence activists briefly shut down Lake Shore Drive on Thursday with a protest march to Wrigley Field. Less than a month ago, Rev. Michael Pfleger led thousands of protesters in a march that shut down the Dan Ryan Expressway, calling for an end to gun violence in Chicago. “It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s a state of emergency in our city,” Pfleger said Sunday in response to the series of mass shootings earlier in the day. “Someplace else in the country, the whole country would be talking about that this morning. All world news and national news would be talking about that. Four types of mass shootings going on in Chicago with those numbers, and it’s a weekend in Chicago, a rough week end. No it’s not a rough weekend! It’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s unacceptable.”<doc-sep>“It had seemed like the city was trending in the right direction, but when you see this, anybody who lives in the city of Chicago is going to be concerned,” said Jens Ludwig, the Crime Lab’s director. At a news conference on Monday, the police superintendent, Eddie Johnson, and the mayor, Rahm Emanuel, sought to place much of the blame for the weekend carnage — and for the still-high rate of violent crime — on factors other than the police department or the city government, citing too many guns in circulation, the failure of courts and judges to convict and hold accountable those caught with illegal guns, and the need for better parenting. “We need everyone, especially our judicial partners, to start making repeat gun offenders feel consequences for their actions,” Mr. Johnson said, adding: “We need everyone to come to the table with less talk, but more action.” They said, too, that people in the neighborhoods with the most violence needed to “step up” and help the police solve these crimes. But community leaders, civil rights groups and critics of the police say those statements belie a deeper problem: That the police have given the people who live in the neighborhoods hardest hit by the violence little reason to trust them. Chicago has one of the lowest rates of solving murders of any major city in the country. In many places, constructive interaction between the community and the police rarely happens, they say, adding that officers react in force to shootings but virtually disappear when it comes to crime prevention, community policing and, often, investigations. The police have maintained for years that an endemic “no-snitch” culture keeps them from solving more serious violent crimes. Many residents are afraid to help because they believe there is little the police would — or could — do to protect them from retaliation.<doc-sep>
Chicago experienced one of the most violent weekends of the year, with 11 people shot dead and 63 more wounded between August 3 and 6. Thirty people were shot in three hours early Sunday in Chicago. Two people were killed and 28 were wounded between midnight and 3 a.m., including at least 13 teenagers. There have been 339 homicides in the city so far in 2018, with 285 people killed as a result of gun violence. Chicago experienced one of the most violent weekends of the year, with 11 people fatally shot and 63 more wounded between 3 p.m. Friday afternoon and 6 a.m. Monday morning, according to the Chicago Tribune. In one three-hour span early Sunday, 30 people were shot, with five mass shootings of three or more victims accounting for 25 of the casualties, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Two people were killed and 28 were wounded between midnight and 3 a.m., including at least 12 teenagers, one of whom was shot in the head and killed, the Sun-Times reported. Shayanne Gal/Business Insider According to police, the shooting with the most victims left eight people wounded in a South Side neighborhood after a group of men walked up to the eight people standing in a courtyard and opened fire, the Sun-Times reported. Four of the victims were teenage girls; all were expected to survive. Less than two hours later, six more people were shot, including five teenagers, when two men walked up to a group of people on a sidewalk in a Southwest Side neighborhood and started shooting, the Sun-Times reported. A 17-year-old girl was shot in the face and killed, and four more teenagers, with ages ranging from 11 to 17, were wounded, the Sun-Times reported. Four more people were shot in a separate shooting at a block party in the same neighborhood of Lawndale just a few hours earlier, the Sun-Times reported. Three of the victims were teenagers, with the youngest age 13. Dozens of people grieved on Sunday morning outside of Stroger Hospital, one of Chicago's busiest trauma centers, the Sun-Times later reported. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” one officer outside Stroger told the Sun-Times. “It’s hot right now. There’s a lot of tension ... And it might get worse because you can hear people talking about revenge, saying on their cellphones ‘I know know who did it. You get him.’” So far in 2018 there have been 339 homicides in Chicago; 285 of those people were killed by gun violence. In 2016, 780 people were killed in Chicago, the highest number of homicides in the city in nearly 20 years. But the homicide rate has been on a steady downward trend since then, with 682 killed in 2017 and a pace of even fewer in 2018.