iStock/Thinkstock(CHICAGO) — Two men gunned down on a porch on Christmas Day were among 12 people slain in Chicago, where an epidemic of killings didn’t stop for the holiday weekend.
The dozen killings and 27 shooting incidents occurred from Friday evening to Sunday evening, according to Chicago police.
That number of killings is twice of last year’s, when six people were slain over Christmas weekend, according to The Chicago Tribune. And last year’s tally ran from Thursday evening to Sunday evening, covering one more day than this year’s count.
The bloody Christmas weekend comes toward the end of a record year of violence in the nation’s third-largest city. More than 750 people have been killed in Chicago in 2016, marking the first time in nearly two decades that the number slain has exceeded 700, according to the Tribune.
Police say the staggering amount of violence is driven by high numbers of incidents in a few police districts on the city’s south and west sides.
The deadly Christmas weekend began just before 11 p.m. on Friday when two men, ages 20 and 21, were fatally shot, police said.
Shortly after midnight on Saturday, a 27-year-old was fatally shot in the abdomen and head, police said.
Early Christmas Day, a 21-year-old was found in a home’s backyard with a fatal gunshot wound to the head, police said.
The final killings of the weekend were late Christmas Day when two young men, ages 18 and 21, were fatally shot during a shooting incident on a porch that left five others injured, police said.
The Chicago Tribune says the two were brothers and were on the porch with their relatives when a gunman ran out from an alley and began firing. After hearing the news, the brothers’ mother screamed and collapsed; three people carried her down the sidewalk, The Chicago Tribune reported.
The shooter fled the scene, police said, and no arrests have been made.
“The levels of violence we have seen this year in some of our communities is absolutely unacceptable,” Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a statement at the end of November. He said the department “will use every tool available to hold violent offenders accountable and will continue to work strategically to address crime and uphold its commitment to rebuild public trust.”
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