6 Hurt After Drive-By Shooter Opens Fire on Large Crowd in Chicago, Reports Say

Stock photo of a police car. (Shutterstock)

At least six people were wounded when a person in a vehicle opened fire on a large crowd in East Garfield Park, Chicago.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, five of the six people who were injured were women. They were standing on the street at around 2:47 a.m. on Aug. 11 on the 3500 block of West Lake Street when someone in a sedan opened fire, police said.

The victims were between 27 and 38 years of age, police told CBS Chicago.

A 25-year-old man was shot in the back and was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition, the Sun-Times reported.

Three women were rushed to the same hospital, and police said a 32-year-old woman was shot in the neck and face, a 32-year-old was shot in the shoulder, and a 27-year-old woman was shot in the leg. They are in stable condition.

The two other women were admitted to Stroger Hospital. The women, aged 37 and 38, were in stable condition. One was shot in the arm, and the other was shot in the shoulder, according to the paper.

The crime scene stretched from St. Louis Avenue to Central Park Avenue, police told the Sun-Times.

Before the drive-by shooting, the crowd was playing music.

A woman told the Sun-Times that she heard the shots, saw people running, and heard people yell, “They shootin'.”

It’s not clear why the victims were gathered outside at that time.

No suspects have been arrested, and there is no motive established in the case.

Other details in the case are not clear.

In another report from CBS Chicago, two people were killed and 38 were wounded across shootings in Chicago from Friday evening until early Sunday morning. The figure includes the victims who were injured in the East Garfield Park shooting.

Last week, a shooting near a playground in Chicago left at least seven people injured.

The people gathered at 1:20 a.m. as they stood in the park on the 2900 West Roosevelt Road when a person opened fire from a black Chevy Camaro, said Chicago Police.

According to NBC Chicago, a 21-year-old male was shot in the groin before he was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition.

A 25-year-old woman was hit in the arm, torso, and leg, and she was taken to Mount Sinai, police told the local station.

A 22-year-old was also shot and was rushed to the hospital, and she is in stable condition, officials said.

Police added that a 20-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman were taken to Stroger Hospital.

A 23-year-old and a 21-year-old took themselves to Mount Sinai with gunshot wounds, ABC7 reported.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that no arrests have been made. Detectives are still investigating.

Facts About Crime in the United States

Violent crime in the United States has fallen sharply over the past 25 years, according to both the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) (pdf).

The rate of violent crimes fell by 49 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the FBI’s UCR, which only reflects crimes reported to the police.

The violent crime rate dropped by 74 percent between 1993 and 2017, according to the BJS’s NCVS, which takes into account both crimes that have been reported to the police and those that have not.

The FBI recently released preliminary data for 2018. According to the Preliminary Semiannual Uniform Crime Report, January to June 2018, violent crime rates in the United States dropped by 4.3 percent compared to the same six-month period in 2017.

While the overall rate of violent crime has seen a steady downward drop since its peak in the 1990s, there have been several upticks that bucked the trend.

Between 2014 and 2016, the murder rate increased by more than 20 percent, to 5.4 per 100,000 residents, from 4.4, according to an Epoch Times analysis of FBI data. The last two-year period that the rate soared so quickly was between 1966 and 1968.