Chicago’s deadliest weekend in 3 years: 17 people shot and killed

On Sunday night, the Cubs thrilled the city with their first home World Series win since 1945.

But on Monday morning, Chicago’s grim reality of 2016 kept setting in: 17 people were shot and killed between Friday evening and late Sunday night, making it the deadliest gun-violence weekend in the city not only this year, but dating all the way back to June 2013, according to Chicago Sun-Times homicide counts.

The death toll is all the more noteworthy given that gun violence typically spikes on hot summer days rather than on cooler ones like the city experienced over the weekend.

But this World Series weekend was different. On top of the 17 dead, 41 other people were wounded.

Among the dead, four victims were between ages 14 and 17, including twin brothers.

Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said deploying extra officers to control crowds around Wrigley Field didn’t impact police staffing in the rest of the city.

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Those neighborhoods hit by the spike in fatal shootings “didn’t get shortchanged at all this weekend,” Johnson said Monday after a police department graduation ceremony at Navy Pier.

“We had adequate resources there. We had canceled days off, as well as 12-hour shifts the entire weekend, Johnson said.

“These violent gun offenders are clearly giving us the message that they just don’t care about the rest of the city of Chicago,” he added. “To be quite frank, I’m sick of it and I know the people in the communities are tired of it. That’s why we have to do a better job of holding those individuals accountable.”

This year’s highest total for fatal shootings on a weekend had been 13; that number was reached on both Father’s Day and Labor Day weekends.

“Clearly there were a lot more people outside, but you would think people would be in a better frame of mind given the fact that the Cubs are playing in the World Series,” Johnson said.

“I can’t tell you the mental status of those individuals that commit the gun crimes or why they chose this weekend. . . . The men and women of CPD work really hard holding these individuals accountable. We’ve recovered close to 7,000 illegal handguns, so that tells you the police are doing their part.”

The 17 dead brought the Sun-Times’ count of homicides to 633 this year. That total includes fatal expressway shootings handled by the Illinois State Police.

As of Oct. 23, the police department had tallied 585 homicides. In all of last year, 486 homicides were recorded citywide.

As of mid-October, more than 2,100 people had been wounded this year and survived, compared with about 1,400 people shot in the same time period in 2015.

Among the dead this year are 78 teens age 18 and under. They include the fraternal twin 17-year-old brothers killed in a drive-by shooting early Sunday in Old Town.

Edwin and Edward Bryant were in the 1300 block of North Hudson around 3:15 a.m. when a dark-colored vehicle drove by and someone inside opened fire, according to police.

Johnson said that in the case of the Bryant twins, “we do have video footage of that incident. We’re making progress on it. The two brothers, as far as we could tell, they didn’t have any documented gang affiliation. But the individuals they were with did. So it’s possibly gang-related.”

He added: “We are making substantial progress on a number of those cases over the weekend. We just have to ensure that we keep working hard and I know the detectives will.”

Edwin Bryant was shot in the chest and back and was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 3:45 a.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office and police. His brother suffered gunshot wounds to the chest and head and was pronounced dead at Northwestern about an hour later.

The twins were juniors at Marshall High School on the West Side after transferring from Lincoln Park High School as freshmen, according Vince Carter, Edward’s coach at the Chicago Demons, a youth basketball program in Old Town. Edwin also played basketball until middle school.

Carter said Edward played on the Demons’ traveling team since 6th grade. Earlier this year, the Demons won the Bigfoot Classic in Houston and the Las Vegas Live tournament. About 30 teams competed in the tournament in Houston and about 75 teams in Las Vegas. “He was a big part of [those wins],” Carter said.

“He played hard,” Carter said.

Lincoln Park High School basketball coach Pat Gordon said students there were taking the loss hard.

“They transferred to Marshall the beginning of last school year, so a lot of our kids know them,” Gordon said. “We have some grief counselors at the school now.

“Edward was the basketball player and Edwin was a football guy, he was two or three inches shorter,” Gordon added. “[Edward] was a talented basketball player and a pretty good student. He was a hard worker. They were very family-oriented. I’m not surprised they were together at that time of night.”

Kobe Mapp, a junior at Bogan High School, had known Edward Bryant since sixth grade. Mapp and several of his friends have changed their Twitter avatars to pictures of Bryant as a tribute.

“He was my best friend,” Mapp said. “He never got into any trouble, he just loved playing basketball and being around people who cared for him.”

The night before the drive-by involving the twins, a 14-year-old boy was gunned down in Austin. DeMarco Webster Jr. was in the 500 block of South Central early Saturday when someone in a dark-colored car shot him in the torso, authorities said. Webster, who lived in the 700 block of South Kedzie, was taken to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, where he died at 3:15 a.m.