Weekend of gun violence in Chicago leaves 65 shot, 5 fatally

Gun violence is showing no signs of easing its bloody grip on Chicago, with 65 people shot — five of them fatally — this past weekend alone.

A third of the shootings between Friday night and early Monday morning took place on the city’s notoriously violent West Side, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Ten of the victims were wounded in three shootings near Garfield Park, the newspaper reported.

At around 1:45 a.m. on Saturday, four people were standing in the 2700 block of West Jackson Boulevard when someone got out of a black truck and opened fire with a rifle. All four were hospitalized in good condition. 

About five minutes later, 34-year-old Carlos Villagomez died at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center after being shot in the head in a separate attack at a party at Logan Square.

At around 3:15 a.m., two women were shot and wounded on West Division Street on the Near North Side. A suspect was arrested a short time later and a gun was recovered, according to police. 

Later that day, at around 3:15 p.m., a group of people was changing a tire in the 3300 block of West Harrison Street when a dark-colored SUV pulled up and someone began shooting, leaving three people wounded, according to police.

One of the victims, aged 30, died after taking a bullet to the face. The other two victims were in critical condition.

Before 6 p.m. that same evening, another drive-by shooting, this time in the 4000 block of West Arlington Street, left three more people wounded.

At around 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, a man and a 25-year-old woman were having an argument in the 5400 block of South Winchester Avenue when another man, 37-year-old Huberto Rosales, tried to intervene.

Police said the first man then pulled out a gun and shot Rosales in the head, killing him. The woman was struck by a bullet in the armpit and was taken to a hospital, where she was in stable condition.

Later in the day, at 6 p.m., 24-year-old Alshaud Scarbough was sitting in a car parked in the 4400 block of Roosevelt Road in the North Lawndale section when he was shot in the head and leg, cops said. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Around the same time, 16-year-old Tyshawn Crawford was standing near a parking lot in the 5900 block of South Indiana Avenue in the Washington Park neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side when he was shot in the stomach. The teen was rushed to Comer Children’s Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries.

For comparison, last week, eight people were killed and at least 17 others were wounded in Chicago, among them an off-duty police officer.

In late June, Chicago’s gun violence epidemic claimed the life of Fox News analyst Gianno Caldwell’s 18-year-old brother.

More than a month after Christian Caldwell’s killing, no arrests have been made, and a $15,000 reward was being offered for information leading to the gunman.

Christian was out with friends on June 24 in the 11400 block of South Vincennes Avenue when someone opened fire, killing him and wounding a 31-year-old man and a 25-year-old woman.

In an opinion piece for The Post published last week, Gianno Caldwell hit out at Chicago’s leaders for having “mistaken necessary criminal justice reform with soft-on crime polices that are endangering the lives of residents from every neighborhood and demographic.”

The Fox News contributor wrote: “living in Chicago comes with a death sentence for too many. The police said my brother was at the wrong place at the wrong time, but my question is, where is it safe in Chicago?”

On Monday, Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown boasted in a tweet that thanks to the efforts of his “brave officers who continue to serve during the most challenging time to be in law enforcement,” citywide homicides were down 39% and shootings were down 25% in July compared to the same time last year.

In 2021, nearly 800 homicides were reported in Chicago, making it the Windy City’s deadliest year in more than a quarter of a century.