Chicago, after nearly 500 homicides last year, logs more than 100 killings so far in 2016
Chicago police officers investigate the scene of a shooting late Friday that wounded two women and a man. A series of shootings Friday and Saturday pushed the number of homicides in Chicago this year past 100.
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Reporting from Chicago — With the first two months of the year still not over, Chicago has already logged more than 100 homicides.
The two latest killings came Friday and Saturday.
Shari Graham was shot while sitting in a cab about 9:45 p.m. Friday in the Wentworth Gardens neighborhood on the South Side, said Officer Hector Alfaro, a Chicago police spokesman. The cab was about a mile south of U.S. Cellular Field when someone fired gunshots from the outside.
It was unknown where the shots originated from, and police said preliminary information indicated she was not the target.
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Graham, 30, was pronounced dead at 10:31 p.m. Friday at Stroger Hospital of Cook County, said the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Graham was at least the 101st person to be killed in 2016, according to data kept by the Chicago Tribune.
The 102nd death came the next day. On Saturday, six people were injured and one killed in daytime shootings on the city’s South and West sides, according to police.
A man and a 24-year old woman were in a vehicle in the Gresham neighborhood when unknown people approached around 3:47 p.m. and opened fire, police said. The man was shot in the head and pronounced dead at the scene.
The woman, wounded in the jaw and leg, was taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center in serious condition, police said.
January saw 57 homicides. The homicides this month more than doubled the total of last February, which saw 20 people killed. The first two months of 2015 saw 52 people killed, and that year ended with almost 500 homicides, according to Tribune data.
Police have said a number of this year’s homicides won’t result in criminal charges, including two shootings in the Town Hall district that were the result of people defending themselves with firearms.
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