Trailer for @ChiraqtheMovie focuses on Violence in Chicago with Satire #MurderCapitalUSA #Chiraq

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At least 62 shot, 9 fatally, during Bloody, Deadly, Gang Violence Filled, 4th of July Weekend in Chicago #Chiraq

Fourth of July weekend shootings have left nine people dead — including a 7-year-old boy — and at least 53 others injured since Thursday evening.

Seven-year-old Amari Brown was killed in a shooting that also left a 26-year-old woman wounded late Saturday in the Humboldt Park neighborhood. Amari, who lived in the 500 block of North Drake, was taken to Stroger Hospital where he was pronounced dead at 1:56 a.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. Police said Sunday the bullet that fatally wounded 7-year-old Amari Brown on the Fourth of July was meant for his father. Both Amari and the 26-year-old woman were shot in the chest at 11:55 p.m. in the 1100 block of North Harding, police said.

The boy’s father, Antonio Brown, is a ranking gang member with 45 previous arrests and was not cooperating with police as of Sunday afternoon as they tried to find his son’s killer, Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy said Sunday, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

“It’s crazy. Like who would shoot a 7-year-old? He got shot in the chest. Who would do that? To a baby?” Amari’s grandmother, 52-year-old Vida Hailey asked as she waited for news outside Stroger. “All the kids that are getting killed out here – it’s crazy. When is it going to stop?”

The woman who was shot was also taken to Stroger, where her condition stabilized.

In the most recent fatal shooting, a 48-year-old man was killed in a Sunday afternoon shooting in the Calumet Heights neighborhood.

Anthony Strong was shot in the right side of his chest about 4:55 p.m. in the 9200 block of South Harper, police said.

Strong, who lived in the same block he was shot, was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where he was pronounced dead at 6:06 p.m., the medical examiner’s office said. Police said they were questioning a person of interest.

Earlier, two brothers from Missouri died Sunday morning after shots were fired at an SUV in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood on the South Side.

John Hunter, 25, and his 31-year-old brother Willie Hunter were sitting inside a Chevrolet SUV about 6:10 a.m. in the 8800 block of South Bishop, when another male walked up and opened fire, according to police and the Cook County medical examiner’s office. The SUV — driven by the younger brother — sped away, but then crashed into a building in the 1600 block of West 89th, authorities said.

John Hunter, of the 300 block of East Ashley Street in Jefferson City, Missouri, was shot multiple times. He was taken to Christ Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 7 a.m., authorities said.

Willie Hunter, of the 1200 block of East High Street in Jefferson City, was discovered unresponsive in the vehicle and was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.

It was not immediately known whether the older brother died from gunshot wounds or injuries suffered in the crash. An autopsy was scheduled for Monday.

Earlier Sunday, a man was killed in a shooting that left two others wounded in the Northwest Side Albany Park neighborhood.

Jeremy Spivey, 23, and the two others were sitting inside a van in an alley near Sunnyside and Kimball about 2:30 a.m. when a male walked up and fired shots, authorities said. Spivey, of the 4700 block of West Belmont, was shot multiple times and taken to Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 4:03 a.m., authorities said.

A 17-year-old boy was shot in the right leg and taken to Masonic, where his condition was stabilized. A 26-year-old woman was shot in the right finger and was being treated at Swedish Covenant Hospital, police said. Relatives of the 17-year-old, who live near the shooting, said they spent the day barbecuing and watching fireworks for the Fourth of July. A female relative said she had heard gunshots around their home between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., then again at 10 p.m.

She took her family inside just five minutes before the shooting. She and her children said they heard about seven gunshots but didn’t think anything of it until they heard ambulances pull up. A police source said all the victims are documented gang members.

About an hour and a half earlier, a man was shot to death in the South Shore neighborhood.

The 26-year-old man was sitting in his car in the 7700 block of South South Shore Drive about 1 a.m. when someone walked up and fired shots into the car, police said. He was taken to South Shore Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. Police said the shooting is possibly gang-related.

A 17-year-old boy was shot to death Friday afternoon in a Bronzeville neighborhood park named after slain King College Prep student Hadiya Pendleton. The teen — identified by authorities as Vonzell Banks of the 4500 block of South Prairie — and a 19-year-old man were standing outside Hadiya Pendleton Park in the 4300 block of South King about 4:45 p.m., when a vehicle approached and someone inside opened fire, police said.

Banks, a Dunbar Vocational High School junior, was playing basketball with his older brother, Vinny, and some friends when he was shot, his aunt, LaShanda Childs, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “He was a loving child, getting ready to be a senior at high school,” Childs said. “He was going to start a summer job on Monday. He was very excited about it.”

Like Pendleton — in whose honor the park was renamed just two months ago — Banks was shot in the back. He was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:31 p.m., according to police and the medical examiner’s office. The man was shot in the right foot and was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where his condition was stabilized. Police said Banks and the 19-year-old were likely not the intended targets of the shooting.

Earlier Friday, a man was killed and a woman was wounded in a South Side Washington Heights neighborhood drive-by shooting on the South Side. The two were walking in the alley in the 9100 block of South Ashland about 1:20 a.m. when someone in a passing white van opened fire, police said.

Grover Tate, 47, of the 1500 block of West 95th Street, was shot in the head and was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said. The woman, 43, was shot in the abdomen and buttocks and was taken to Christ Medical Center, where her condition had stabilized, police said.

A 26-year-old man was killed in the same block he lived in just after midnight Friday in the South Side Back of the Yards neighborhood. The man, identified as Jose Hernandez, was sitting on a porch at 12:05 a.m. in the 4800 block of South Justine when another male walked up and shot him in the back, authorities said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead less than an hour later, the medical examiner’s office said.

An officer at the scene said the shooting — the second on that block in about nine hours — may have stemmed from a conflict involving the La Raza street gang. Neighbors said they heard about four to six gunshots.

“We were all in the kitchen you know, having bonding, family time, and this happens,” said 15-year-old Jocelyn Avila, who lives on the block and also heard gunshots from the other shooting at 3 p.m. Thursday.

The weekend’s first homicide happened Thursday evening in the Little Village neighborhood on the Southwest Side.

About 6:25 p.m., Joseph Gutierrez was riding a bicycle in the 2700 block of South Karlov when a gunman ran up and shot him repeatedly in the upper body, authorities said.

Gutierrez, of the 6200 block of South Kenneth, was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 9:06 p.m., the medical examiner’s office said. Police said the shooting may have been gang-related.

On Saturday night, a man was shot in Streeterville shortly after the Navy Pier fireworks show. The 19-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen at 10:06 p.m. in the 200 block of East Ohio, according to police and fire officials. He was taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in serious-to-critical condition, fire officials said.

A possible shooter was taken into custody and a weapon was recovered at the scene.

At least 47 others have been injured in shootings since 4:45 p.m. Thursday.

Per SunTimes Wire Reports.

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#Chiraq - Gangs Have Turned Chicago into a War Zone, #MurderCapitalUSA, 45 Shot on Easter Weekend, 37 More the Weekend Before

President Obama may have gotten our troops out of Iraq, but the gunfire in his hometown of Chicago is still earning it a searing nickname coined by young people who live there.

Chiraq.

On Easter weekend, 45 people were shot in the city, six of them children. Five youngsters under the age of 15—four girls and a boy—were shot in a playground where they had gone after Easter services at a nearby church.

Witnesses agree that a car pulled up and one of the occupants asked the youngsters if they were in a gang. There is some dispute about whether the youngsters even got a chance to say no before the people in the car started shooting.

The most seriously wounded, 11-year-old Tymisha Washington, was listed in critical condition with multiple gunshot wounds. She is expected to survive.

“Prayers Going Up Blessings Coming Down,” read a posting on her aunt’s Facebook page.

A Facebook argument had apparently sparked a completely unrelated shooting at the start of the weekend. Best friends Jordan Means, 16, and Anthony Bankhead, 18, got into the online spat with a man in his 30s. The man is said to have followed his final post by appearing in the flesh and shooting the two teens to death.

Two other men were fatally shot later in the weekend as they sat in a car that was also occupied by two kids, ages 3 and 7. The children were physically unharmed but no doubt will join those who are as mentally scarred by living in Chicago as were some combat veterans who returned from the war in Iraq. And this bloody Easter weekend was preceded by a weekend in which 37 people were shot, four of them fatally.

FBI Director James Comey happened to be in Chicago the following Monday, and he ascribed much of the violence to the gang culture so deeply ingrained in the city. But Comey had little to say about what Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy recognizes as the core problem.

“Until we do something about guns, don’t expect things to change overnight,” McCarthy said at a press conference that same day.

McCarthy noted that Chicago cops have seized 1,500 illegal guns so far this year, but the people caught with the weapons are all too often back on the street all too soon. “It’s like running on a hamster wheel,” McCarthy said of the effort to grapple with the problem. “We’re drinking from a fire hose, seizing these guns, and people are back out on the street. They’re not learning that carrying a firearm is going to have a serious impact on their lives.”

McCarthy invoked the memory of Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old who was killed by a stray round in 2013, just days after performing at Obama’s second inauguration. McCarthy noted that her suspected killer had been at liberty despite having been convicted of illegal gun possession just two months before.

“If he’s not out on the street, Hadiya Pendleton is out there being an honor student and continuing on with her life,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy emphasized that the Chicago Police Department is pursuing a wide range of strategies to stem the violence, much of which is gang-related. And the murder rate is actually down this year. But even the smartest policing by the most dedicated cops can only do so much in the absence of effective gun laws.

“If you don’t go to jail for gun possession, you continue to carry guns,” McCarthy said. “You continue to carry guns, and people get shot.”

Other people who have gotten shot in Chicago in recent days include 17-year-old Ronald Hayes, who was expected to be the first in his family to graduate from high school and who had promised to take his mother to the prom because she never had the opportunity to attend one. He was gunned down in February as he shoveled snow outside a neighbor’s home.

There was also 17-year-old Gakirah Barnes. Her Twitter moniker was @tyquannassassin, apparently in honor of a 13-year-old relative named Tyquann Tyler who was killed by a stray bullet in 2012. Barnes reportedly was allied with the rapper Lil Jay and the late rapper Lil JoJo, who was killed in 2012 by a not at all stray round after releasing video dissing Chief Keef, the rapper. Keef’s 30-year-old cousin Mario “BigGlo” Hess was shot to death on April 9. Barnes tweeted a reference to a Notorious B.I.G. lyric the next day.

“u Nobody until Somebody kill u u dats jst real Shyt.”

A friend quickly responded.

“More bodies BITCH This Chiraq.”

The following afternoon, Barnes was herself shot to death, hit as many as nine times. She was to be buried near her father, who reportedly was shot death on an Easter 16 years and thousands of murders ago.

Her death was followed by the April 15 shooting of Lil Jojo’s 16-year-old cousin Keno Blass. Keef’s cousin was buried on Friday, with the star rapper serving as a pallbearer. But if a rap war of sorts is behind some of the recent killings and gang rivalries are behind many more and a Facebook spat led to two of the murders, the common denominator in all the shootings is guns.

The war that now demands the president’s attention is the one in Chiraq.

Thanks to Michael Daly.

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