At least 60 people were shot, and 11 people killed, between Thursday afternoon and Monday morning in the city of Chicago, marking a particularly bloody 4th of July weekend.
According to WLS-TV Chicago, the victims included a woman shot to death in front of her daughter at a barbecue and a young man gunned down while standing on a street corner.
In at least two instances, victims were shot by police.
During the same weekend previous year, WLS reported that a dozen people died and 75 people were injured.
In an e-mailed statement, police spokesman Martin Maloney said, “We saw an unacceptable level of gun violence this weekend, and there is clearly much more work to be done.” Maloney said the Chicago police plans to continue flooding high-crime areas with police, but that the city faces an “uphill battle” in the long term without better state and federal gun laws.
CNN reports that this weekend’s shootings represent a slight uptick over the previous week, which saw some 52 shooting incidents, according to police department statistics. As of June 29, Chicago police had recorded 880 shootings this year — an average of nearly five a day.
