Though violent crime in Chicago is down this summer, young people have been particularly vulnerable to gun violence in recent months. This weekend, that trend continued as a 14-year-old boy was shot "execution style" on the West Side and a 9-year-old was wounded while sitting with family on the South Side.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Joseph Price was fatally shot about 2 p.m. Sunday in the 500 block of North Long as he was walking to his brother's home. Witnesses say someone walked up to Price and shot him in the head in what police believe was a gang-motivated shooting.
(Scroll down to watch a video report on the Sunday shooting.)
Friends of Price, who was staying in a temporary group home for troubled teens in the 600 block of North Laramie Avenue, told FOX Chicago he loved playing basketball and was preparing to start high school. He had also was hoping to move to Milwaukee to live with his sister, pending the decision of an upcoming court hearing this week, according to the Sun-Times.
"I don't know why someone would shoot him so many times in the head," Price's guardian, Gayland Hill, told ABC 7. "His birthday was next month. All he kept talking about was what to do on his fifteenth birthday."
As ABC Chicago reports, the same afternoon tragedy struck in Austin, dozens of residents and ministers took to the streets on the city's South Side for an anti-violence march in Englewood. The march was organized in response to the shooting death last week of Charinez Jefferson, a 17-year-old who was six months pregnant when she was gunned down while walking home from a store.
"Marching makes a difference," Bishop Tavis Grant of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition told ABC. "This time around, we have people crossing denominational or religious lines, people working with law enforcement, working hand-in-hand. It creates an atmosphere, an environment where people like this have no hiding place."
Shots reportedly rang out about a half block from the march near 63rd Street Sunday, not far from where, on Friday evening, a 9-year-old boy, DeShawn McKenzie, and his 24-year-old cousin, Jasmine Platt, were shot while they sat on their porch. According to NBC Chicago, someone approached their home on the 6400 block of South Racine Avenue and opened fire about 10 p.m. The boy was listed in critical condition as of mid-Saturday, but is expected to survive. No suspect has yet been identified in that shooting.
Jefferson's baby boy is currently in critical condition. Her alleged killer, 18-year-old Timothy Jones, was charged Sunday.
Photo by [puamelia] via Flickr.