A 12-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy were wounded during a chaotic weekend night in downtown Chicago as police responded to roving crowds of youths.
The girl was shot in the back in the first block of North Michigan Avenue Saturday night hours before the boy was shot in the arm not far away in the 200 block of North Wabash Avenue, according to police.
The girl was with a group of people when someone fired in their direction around 8:40 p.m., police said. She suffered a gunshot wound to the back and was taken in serious condition to Comer Children’s Hospital, according to police.
Police did not report the shooting until late Monday and reported no arrests.
Around 11:20 p.m., a 15-year-old boy was shot four blocks away. He bumped into someone on the street and they began arguing, police said. The other person pulled a gun and shot the boy in the arm. He was taken in good condition to Lurie Children’s Hospital.
Police said they dispatched extra patrols to control crowds. In addition to the two shootings, a CTA bus driver was beaten downtown and two cops were injured. At least 22 juveniles were arrested and two “replica firearms” were seized.
Both shootings happened in the Central police district, which has seen a 20% increase in murders and a 56% increase in shootings this year, according to police data.
The boy and girl are among more than 100 children 15 and younger who have been shot in Chicago this year, according to Sun-Times records. At least 27 of the children have been killed, more than all of last year.
Gun violence continues to outpace last year across the city, according to Sun-Times data.
At least 4,168 people have been shot in Chicago this year, an increase of 8.1% from this time last year — and about 70% more than this time in 2019.
There have been at least 754 homicides, 3.9% more than last year at this time and more than 60% higher than the same period in 2019.
