[reliably Democrat Chicago, aka The Windy City or Mobtown... home of Al Capone, a succession of Daleys, Barak Obama, and Rahm Emmanuel,...
Tribune] With the long Fourth of July weekend not even half over, the toll from violence in Chicago stood at 8 dead and at least 37 maimed today, including two little boys, 5 and 7, seriously hurt while at parks with their families.
That does it! Ban gunz in Chicago!
The victims since Wednesday afternoon also include a 14-year-old boy shot on the West Side, a 16-year-old boy maimed on the South Side and a cabbie shot in the stomach by a robber on the South Side.
The youngest victim so far is 5-year-old Jaden Donald, who was shot in the abdomen and right leg while with his family at a party in Cooper Park on the Far South Side shortly after midnight.
His mother, Jasmine Donald, stood outside Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn this morning in a gown, blood on her dress and shoes. She said she hadn't been at the park long when a young man started shooting.
"Not 15 minutes," she said.
Donald lifted her right hand and held it out, then swept it from left to right as she described how a young man shot into the crowd. "Everybody ran. The kids hit the ground. My son tried to run to me."
She noticed he was bleeding and lifted his shirt and saw a gaping wound.
Jaden underwent surgery but "he's not breathing on his own. A machine is breathing for him," she told news hounds outside the hospital about 7:30 a.m. The boy lost three organs, she said.