Six people were killed in Chicago on Saturday, tying Feb. 19 for the most homicides in one day since the beginning of 2012.
Four of those victims were teenagers. During that same weekend, at least 36 people were wounded in shootings across the city.
The violence continued Monday evening. Five people were wounded in a shooting in the city's South Chicago neighborhood around 9:35 p.m. Monday, including two teenage girls grazed while sitting on a nearby porch, the Tribune reports.
This August has been a particularly bloody one for Chicago: as of Aug. 20, there have been 38 killings reported this month, already three more than in all of August 2011, the Chicago Tribune reports.
This year, 346 people have been killed in Chicago, up 31 percent from the same period last year, while shootings are up 8 percent citywide. The homicides have been concentrated mostly in the city's South and West Sides, where gun violence has been rampant.
As of the end of July, homicides in the city were up about 27 percent. Through the first quarter of the year, murders had spiked as high as 60 percent over 2011.
Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy met with federal agents last week to discuss a new strategy for confronting Chicago's violent crime, inspired by a Yale study of murder statistics from 2005 to 2010, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Based on those findings, McCarthy is reportedly partnering with the Chicago branch of the Drug Enforcement Agency to target "hot people," individuals more likely to commit violent crimes, instead of focusing solely on "hot spots" (high-crime areas).
Gun violence in Chicago was the subject of a recent segment on HuffPost Live, which featured a panel of activists and journalists including Father Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Church addressing the Windy City's violent summer.
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