A 12-year-old boy was wounded by gunfire while riding his bicycle in Chicago's Back of the Yards neighborhood early Thursday evening.
The boy was riding near 50th and Peoria streets in the South Side neighborhood around 6 p.m. when someone in a car passing by opened fire and shot him in the leg, missing his apparent intended target, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The Chicago Sun-Times had a slightly different report on the shooting, reporting that the boy was wounded around 4:30 p.m. and was taken to and released from Stroger Hospital.
According to the Sun-Times, five others were shot overnight Thursday evening into Friday, including two possibly connected shootings that took place within five minutes and two blocks of the other around 1:25 a.m. in the city's Ukrainian Village neighborhood.
Both of the Ukrainian Village shootings took place in conjunction with robberies.
Gun violence has been on the rise in Chicago thus far this year, but on Wednesday, the RedEye's Tracy Swartz reported that the city had gone four days without a homicide. That run came to a halt Thursday evening when 38-year-old Ornette Massey was fatally shot at 6:30 p.m. in the 5600 block of South Michigan Avenue, according to CBS Chicago.
Miguel Cruz, 28, was the city's second homicide victim from the Wednesday evening to early Thursday period. Cruz was fatally shot around 2 a.m. Thursday in the city's Humboldt Park neighborhood, the Tribune reported. A second man was wounded in the same shooting.
Earlier this month, Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy described the city's crime-fighting efforts as a "day-by-day" matter and pointed out that the number of homicides in the city as of Sept. 8 were down this month compared to the same month last year, according to the Tribune.
"Now, that’s a very short time-frame, but it’s still relevant," Chicago's top cop added, according to the newspaper.
No one is in custody in the above shootings as of early Friday afternoon.
Photo by Michael Melchiorre via Flickr.
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