April 21--The number of people shot in Chicago this year passed 1,000 this week, a grim milestone as gun violence in the city continues at a pace not seen since the 1990s.
The city reached the 1,000 mark on Wednesday, when 13 people were shot over 14 hours, including a 4-year-old boy hit in the foot as he walked with his mother in the Lawndale neighborhood on the West Side. Another boy, 6, was cut on the finger during the same incident, according to police.
In the Austin police district nearby, four people were wounded in three shootings during the day.
The 1,000th person shot apparently was a 16-year-old boy wounded in the knee shortly before 4 p.m. near 131st Street and Champlain Avenue in the Altgeld Gardens public housing complex, according to data compiled by the Tribune.
In recent years, Chicago hasn't reached 1,000 shooting victims until June. Last year, Chicago recorded its 1,000th person shot on June 4, Tribune data show. In 2013, the city hit that mark on June 26, and the year before that, June 9.
This year's toll is more than 66 percent higher than the same time last year, according to Tribune data.
Through April 21, 2015, there were 600 people shot in Chicago; through the same period in 2014, 483 people; in 2013, 513 people; in 2012, 667 people (that year would see a spike in both shootings and homicides).
Chicago's homicides this year are up by 64 percent, with 161 reported by the department through Sunday, compared with 98 over the same period last year, official police statistics show. In the early to mid-1990s, homicides peaked at more than 900 a year.
The number of people shot in Chicago this year exceeds the nation's two larger cities, New York and Los Angeles, combined.
Through April 10, 246 people had been shot in New York, a city more than three times the size of Chicago, according to New York Police Department statistics. In LA, a city with more than a million more people than Chicago, 294 people had been shot through April 9, Los Angeles Police Department statistics show.
Chicago Tribune's Liam Ford, Peter Nickeas, Megan Crepeau and Alex Chachkevitch contributed.
