News of Chicago's latest mass shooting traveled across the United States and around the world last week, landing in a news feed in Moscow, Russia. Latest mass shooting. Let that sink in for a moment.
"At least 15 shot, 2 killed in Mass Shooting in US' Chicago," the international headline read.
A "pop-up party" at a business in the Park Manor neighborhood turned deadly when a shooting erupted inside. At least 15 people were hit, two fatally. Police will need the help of witnesses to put a case together, to find and arrest the perpetrators. Will anyone help them? Or will the murderer, or two or three, remain free, protected by silence?
Big-city violence is on the rise across the country. Chicago ended last year with a startling 55% increase in homicides over 2019. This year is not off to a good start. And summer is coming.
Last summer, 24 children under the age of 11 were shot, five fatally during a one-month stretch: 20-month-old Sincere Gaston, shot in the back seat of a car; 3-year-old Mekhi James, also shot in the back seat of a car; 13-year-old Amaria Jones, shot by a bullet that flew into her residence; 7-year-old Natalia Wallace, shot on a sidewalk; 10-year-old Lena Nunez, hit by a bullet while inside her home.
On March 14, a 13-year-old was shot in the South Shore neighborhood because, apparently, he happened to be standing near an unfolding armed robbery. Earlier this month, an 11-year-old boy was shot while driving with his aunt in West Pullman. He survived.
But the numbers, the stories, the analogies fail when a city is so routinely, so grievously overcome by recklessness and gunfire.
And what will happen now, in the days and weeks following the latest mass shooting? More retaliation, on the streets, the homes, the neighborhoods, maybe even at a funeral? That was another mass shooting, July of last year, when a drive-by shooter aimed out the window of a moving vehicle and unloaded a weapon at mourners waiting outside a South Side funeral home. A disabled woman dove from her wheelchair to avoid being hit. As we said then: "The chaos is so beyond reason that it threatens to no longer shock."
