Chicago goes 109 hours without a homicide

CHICAGO (Sun-Times Media Wire) - Four men were wounded in separate shootings on the South and West sides of Chicago on Thursday.

The end of the day marked more than 109 hours without a reported homicide in the city, the longest such stretch so far this year, according to Chicago Sun-Times data. The last fatal shooting happened Sunday morning in North Lawndale.

With five nonfatal shootings over the first two days of the month, Chicago has seen a relative lull in gun violence after a February when more than 210 people were shot and the city eclipsed the 100-homicide mark just 56 days into the year.

Since Jan. 1, at least 520 people have been shot, 96 of them fatally — a rate that has kept pace with the carnage of 2016, the worst year of city violence in two decades.

The latest attack happened about 7:30 p.m. Thursday in the Fernwood neighborhood, where officers responding to a call of shots fired in the 10400 block of South Wallace found a 20-year-old man with a gunshot wound to the leg, according to Chicago Police. He was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, but additional details weren’t available.

Just after 5 p.m., a 28-year-old man was sitting in a van in Lawndale’s 4300 block of West Ogden when someone got out of a gold car and shot him in the back, police said. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in good condition.

Ninety minutes earlier in the same neighborhood, a 20-year-old man heard gunfire in the 3800 block of West Roosevelt, and realized he’d been shot in the back as he ran away, police said. He was in good condition at Mount Sinai.

Thursday’s first shooting happened about 2:30 p.m. in Austin, where someone in another car opened fire on a 38-year-old man who was sitting in a vehicle in the 5200 block of West Madison, police said. He was shot in the head and taken in critical condition to Stroger Hospital.