5 wounded in Chicago shooting hours after mass shooting kills 4

Five people were wounded in a shooting in Chicago on Tuesday night, hours after another mass shooting in the city that killed four and injured four more.

Four men and one woman were shot near the 3800 block of West Monroe Street around 9:20 p.m. CT, possibly by multiple offenders, police said. There are currently no cooperating witnesses and no arrests have been made.

All victims were being treated at nearby hospitals. Of them, a 38-year-old man is in critical condition after sustaining a gunshot wound to the leg, and the four other victims are in stable condition. A 29-year-old woman suffered a gunshot wound to the back, a 39-year-old man was shot in the shoulder and leg, a 40-year-old man was shot in the shoulder, and a 33-year-old man was shot in the leg, police said.

The incident followed the earlier mass shooting in which three women and one man were fatally shot and four more were injured. In that incident, shots were fired around 5:45 a.m. CT Tuesday after an argument escalated inside a residence in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood.

No arrests have been made in connection with that shooting, according to Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown.

At a press conference, Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the mass shooting “a tragedy that’s ripped apart families and inflicted intense trauma on several individuals,” adding that the city still has work to do to curb gun violence and limit access to illegal guns.

Lightfoot is facing pressure to curb violent crime, which has spiked over the past year and a half, the Chicago Tribune reported, a problem she has blamed on the pandemic.

A recent surge in shootings in Chicago has sparked fears of a violent summer after three people were killed and 34 were wounded over the Memorial Day weekend, and five people were killed and at least 55 were wounded the following weekend.

Though homicides tend to peak in the summer, they are up 5 percent and shootings are up 17 percent this year compared to the same period last year, Brown said at a news conference earlier this month.

Violent crime was declining in the city before the recent surge in shootings. May was the second straight month the number of homicides in the city declined compared to the same month last year, and this year’s Memorial Day saw less violent crime than last year.