Eighteen people were killed in Chicago in a 24-hour span last month – the deadliest day in the Windy City in roughly six decades, according to a report.
The slayings — including those of a high school student and a college freshman who aspired to become a correctional officer — occurred on May 31 as the city grappled with ongoing civil unrest in the aftermath of George Floyd’s police-custody death in Minneapolis, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
The grim tally made May 31 the single-most violent day Chicago has endured in roughly 60 years, according to data provided to the newspaper by the University of Chicago Crime Lab.
“We’ve never seen anything like it, at all,” the crime lab’s senior research director, Max Kapustin, told the newspaper. “I don’t even know how to put it into context. It’s beyond anything that we’ve ever seen before.”
Data from the lab does not pre-date 1961, but the next highest single-day murder total in Chicago was on Aug. 4, 1991, when 13 Chicagoans died in homicides, according to the report.
When the entire weekend is taken into context, 25 people were killed citywide from late May 29 through May 31, while another 85 people were hurt by gunfire, the Sun-Times reports, making it the most violent weekend in modern Chicago history.
While citing an “unprecedented” level of activity within the past week, a Chicago police spokesman said detectives were investigating several incidents and working to determine motives.
“The department is actively working to seek justice for all the residents impacted, especially those who have been killed or injured by these senseless acts of violence,” police spokesman Thomas Ahern told the Sun-Times in a statement.
Police brass cancelled time-off for all cops after “increased violent and criminal activity” starting on May 30. The move allowed the department to direct its “full force of manpower” into neighborhoods in Chicago’s South and West sides, Ahern said.
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