GRAPHIC: 2014 Summer Weekend Shootings

The warmer, summer months are typically when gun violence increases in Chicago, and that trend has continued in 2014. The weekends are often when the number of shootings spikes throughout the city, as reported by the Sun-Times weekend shooting tracker, which has documented more than 500 weekend shootings since the middle of April. An examination of the data compiled by the tracker reveals common tendencies among these shootings: Most take place in South and West Side neighborhoods and occur in the late evening and early morning hours and, as has been the case in recent years, the July 4th weekend is one of the summer’s most violent. Scroll through these charts to view a summary of 2014 summer weekend* shootings:

LOCATION

The Austin neighborhood has seen the most weekend gun violence of any community area in Chicago this summer. Use the slider below to map to view shootings over time and click on a shooting location for details:

DATE

July had the highest number of weekend shootings, which included an extremely violent 4th of July weekend and an incident later in the month in which their were seven victims, the most of any weekend shooting this summer:

TIME

Not surprisingly, the late night/early morning hours were when most weekend shootings occurred. The least likely time for a shooting to take place on the weekend was from 8-9 a.m.:

*A weekend is defined as Friday evening through the early hours of Monday morning