Chicago has deadliest weekend of the year with 18 killed

FOX 32 NEWS - The weekend may have ended on a good note for the Cubs, but the rest of the city lost. Chicago Police said that 18 people were killed this weekend and more than 40 others wounded in the most deadly weekend of 2016

“It was a tough weekend,” is how Superintendent Eddie Johnson summed things up.

Johnson called the level of violence this weekend unacceptable. But he made it clear it was not because of all the officers working around Wrigley Field. Those officers were working on their days off, or 12 hour shifts and were not reallocated from violence prone areas in the city.

“So, I'm confident we had the resources out there, but again these violent gun offenders are clearly giving us the message that they just don't care about the rest of the city of Chicago and to be quite frank, I'm quite sick of it and I know the people in the communities are tired of it,” Johnson said.

Among those killed, 14-year-old Demarco Webster, Jr. who was the victim of a drive by shooting in the Austin neighborhood. Webster was outside the family's home helping his father move when shots rang out. He may have been a victim of mistaken identity.

In another incident this weekend, a man was killed and a woman with him in a car was wounded in a shooting at a gas station in the Back of the Yards neighborhood.

“Listen, until we start holding repeat gun offenders accountable for these crimes, we're gonna keep seeing cycles of gun violence like this. The majority of these shootings this weekend were gang related, we know that, but they just have no fear of the consequences of their actions,” Johnson said.

Chicago has now surpassed 600 murders for the year. The last time that many people were killed was 2005.

But why the spike this weekend? Johnson had no answer for that.

“Clearly there were a lot more people outside, but you would think that people would be in a better frame of mind given the fact that the Cubs are playing in the World Series. So, I can't really tell you the mental status of those individuals that commit the gun crimes or why they chose this weekend,” Johnson said.