6 dead, 23 hurt in shootings over weekend
Warmer weather likely to trigger more violence, police fear
By Megan Twohey and Emily S. Achenbaum
Tribune reporters
11:30 PM CDT, April 20, 2008
Maurice Sanders was feeling giddy as he stepped out of a neighbor's party Saturday night. The West Side party had drawn more than 50 teenagers, and Sanders had spent hours there joking with friends and flirting with girls, he said.
The hint of summer was in the air, but the euphoria inspired by warm weather quickly turned to terror when someone on the corner unleashed gunfire into the small group assembled outside the party in Chicago's South Austin neighborhood. By the time the shooting stopped, four people had been wounded, including Sanders.
"I fell face-down," said Sanders, 16, who was struck by a bullet in his left foot in the 5300 block of West Madison Street. "When I saw another boy on the ground, I thought he was dead."
Sanders was one of 28 people shot, six fatally, in Chicago between 12:01 a.m. Friday and 7 a.m. Sunday, part of a bloody string of violence that stretched across the city, police said. At least one more shooting occurred Sunday evening.
It's the dark side of summer's promise. At a news conference Sunday, Police Supt. Jody Weis spelled out the twisted reality: As the days grow longer and people head outdoors, more confrontations erupt. And with guns flooding the streets, many of those confrontations end in violence.
"There are just too many weapons here," Weis said, pointing out that 19 people in the city were shot, four of them fatally, the same weekend in April 2007, and that 20 to 22 people were shot on average every weekend last July...
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