Reports: 7 People Shot, Injured Near Chicago Playground

A police car in a file photo. (Diego Parra/Pixabay)

At least seven people were shot and wounded on Aug. 4 as they gathered near a playground on Chicago’s West Side.

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.

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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.

Hours later, another shooting left two people injured a few blocks from the playground, the Sun-Times reported.

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As reported by CBS Chicago, three people have been killed and 33 were wounded in weekend shootings across the Windy City.

So far, in 2019, more than 1,500 people have been shot in the city, which is about 129 fewer than in 2018, according to the Chicago Tribune.

“Shooting victims are most concentrated in the South and West sides for shooting victims so far in 2019,” the report noted.

Other details about the incident are not clear.

Facts About Crime in the United States

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.

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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.

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.