The city of Chicago notched a grim milestone last weekend, as 18 people were murdered on Sunday, May 31 alone, marking the deadliest day in the city since at least 1961.
The University of Chicago Crime Lab's numbers do not go back further than 1961, so it's impossible to say how long it's been — if ever — since so many people were murdered in the city one 24-hour stretch.
The Chicago Sun-Times describes some of the victims:
A hardworking father killed just before 1 a.m.
A West Side high school student murdered two hours later.
A man killed amid South Side looting at a cellphone store at 12:30 p.m.
A college freshman who hoped to become a correctional officer, gunned down at 4:25 p.m. after getting into an argument in Englewood.
In the entire weekend stretching from 7 p.m. Friday, May 29, through 11 p.m. Sunday, May 31, 24 people were killed in Chcago and another 85 were wounded by gunfire.
The next-highest murder total for a single day in Chicago was on Aug. 4, 1991, when 13 people were killed.
"We've never seen anything like it, at all," said Max Kapustin, the senior research director at the crime lab. " ... I don't even know how to put it into context. It's beyond anything that we've ever seen before."
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United States