Chicago Passes Threshold of 500 Homicides in 2016

The newspaper says eight died of 54 people who were shot during last year’s Labor Day weekend.

In another shooting, a pregnant woman and her boyfriend have been hospitalized after they were wounded in a shooting on the South Side.

The city did not record 500 homicides over the entirety of previous year; the final 2015 homicide count totaled 491. The Chicago Tribune reports that 31 of the shooting victims were shot between 6 a.m. on Monday and 3 a.m. Tuesday. Among the wounded was a pregnant woman who delivered a almost full-term baby after she was shot in the abdomen. The shooting occurred around 6:30 a.m. Monday.

Early Monday morning, it appeared Chicago had a chance of ending a holiday weekend with fewer than four dozen people shot, which would have made it one of the least violent weekends of the summer.

The long weekend brought about by the annual Labor Day celebration was marred by 65 shooting incidents in Chicago where 13 of the victims succumbed to various gunshot wounds. There were 69 people shot, six fatally, over Memorial Day Weekend and 66 shot, five fatally, during the Fourth of July weekend.

Headed into the holiday weekend, Chicago Police Union leaders urged officers not to volunteer for additional shifts over the weekend as a protest for what union officials called a “show of unity and to protest the continued disrespect of Chicago Police Officers and the killings of Law Enforcement Officers across our Country”. New Orleans, St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore and Newark all have higher homicide rates per 100,0000 people, all higher than Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and NY, since 1984. More than 2,930 people have been shot this year. New York City and Los Angeles have had 409 homicides combined this year.

There were 90 homicides in Chicago in August, tying with June 1996 for the most killings in a single month.