A visibly shaken Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday joined police officials in pleading for witnesses to tell police what they know about a shooting outside a gang funeral that left 15 people shot and about the shooting of a three-year-old as the child’s parents were driving away after an altercation at a gas station.
“This is a mourning morning. Another day that we start with despair. Another day we start with reporting on violence that has struck a neighborhood,” a clearly exhausted Lightfoot told reporters at City Hall.
“We cannot give the killers, the shooters, any shelter. … Someone listening at this moment knows who is responsible for these and other crimes. … I implore you not to be silent in this moment. … I recognize there is fear. But if we are silent, the violence will continue. … This is our time to step up. We are the majority. We are the people who will change this narrative, but only if the silence is broken.”
The Tuesday night shooting at a gang funeral in Auburn-Gresham produced the largest number of victims in a single Chicago shooting in recent memory.
Police Superintendent David Brown and Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan said police had “intelligence that the deceased” at the funeral was “killed in a drive-by shooting” with a “gang connection,” so police resources were “deployed accordingly.”
A full tactical team was in the area prior to the shooting, along with two squad cars. The response is the same for all gang funerals and would have been the same even if police had not been warned that the funeral might trigger a retaliatory shooting, the superintendent said.
The Sun-Times has reported that the funeral was for Donnie Weathersby, 31, who was shot and killed last week in the 7400 block of South Stewart — about a mile and a half northeast from where Tuesday’s shooting occurred.
The founder of Mothers Against Senseless Killings, a South Side violence prevention group, said Tuesday night she had warned Chicago police as recently as that morning about the potential for shooting at the funeral.
“It’s scary because you know you’re on your own out here, we’re not going to get any protection...” said Tamar Manasseh. “We saw something, we said something ... the community spoke up and this still happened.”
Manasseh is especially concerned because the shooting happened just over a mile southwest from where her group, MASK, has built a school that will care for children whose parents are essential workers. The location where Weathersby was fatally shot last week is a block away from the school.
Manasseh said she saw a video posted to Facebook Live, which has since been deleted, in which several young men boasted about the Weathersby’s slaying.
“People in the neighborhood were scared because they made a video saying they’re killing mothers, they’re killing kids, they’re killing old people, they don’t care, they’re killing everybody...” Manasseh said.
Deenihan confirmed the funeral victim was shot in a drive-by shooting on July 14 and police were at the funeral in the event of retaliation but were powerless to stop it.
“Several individuals were hanging out. A Malibu came pulling around the block. You see an individual from the Malibu discharge firearms into the crowd. The victims were also armed and started shooting back. The car crashes. They flee on foot. The car used in the shooting was stolen. Detectives are working on that to determine how and when,” Deenihan said.
Fifteen people were shot. One of them is still in “extremely critical condition.” Another victim is in critical condition. Doctors believe the rest of the victims “will make it,” Deenihan said. Nearly 60 shell casing were recovered from the shooting scene. Police are working with the shooting victims. But, they desperately need additional witnesses, he said.
Video surveillance of the incident is “not graphic enough to give us personal identifiers” of the three people in the Malibu, two of whom did the shooting, he said.
“People know they were going to do this. It wasn’t just random. ... We believe that there’s individuals out in the community and out in the crowd who know the shooters. They know who did this incident. We are imploring, really seeking [help]. Please help the detectives with this investigation,” Deenihan said.
“This can’t happen. You can’t drive down the street and indiscriminately shoot into a crowd of people, then flee the scene and make good your escape. We know the information is out there. The detectives want to arrest these individuals and bring them to justice. So we’re seeking the community’s cooperation to assist us in this investigation and remove these offenders from the street.”
Lightfoot similarly pleaded for help in the shooting of a 3-year-old a few hours later while riding in her family vehicle in South Shore.
The mayor urged the toddler’s parents to tell police about the gas station altercation that prompted one of the antagonists to shoot into their car while the 3-year-old’s father was driving away.
The child was shot in the head, but is in stable condition and talking, Deenihan said.
“By the grace of God, she is still with us,” the mayor said.
In a morning-after scene that has become tragically and numbingly familiar, Lightfoot said this is a “difficult time to stand here because of the pain we are all feeling.”
But, the mayor said she woke up this morning more determined than ever to break the never-ending cycle of gang violence in Chicago and bring hope to young men who believe their only future “lies on the corner” selling drugs.
“To the cowards behind these shootings, we have to ask you to find your humanity,” the mayor said.
“This cycle of retaliation ... solves nothing, but causes so much life-long pain. I pray for you. But, I also pray that we find you.”
Brown made no effort to belittle the challenge. He noted that Chicago has 117,000 gang members broken down into 55 major gangs and 747 factions with 2,500 “subsets of those factions.” Any day of the week, any hour of the day, Chicago has “several hundred gang conflicts,” he said.
The cycle of violence in Chicago “repeats itself” like a broken record. Someone is shot. Somebody else “picks up a gun and retaliates,” the superintendent said. The “bullet-for-bullet” cycle is “killing families and destroying neighborhoods.” It’s done in “anger and desperation. It has to stop,” he said.
“These bullets are destroying our sense of safety” and leaving neighborhoods with a “sense of hopelessness,” Brown said.
“This cycle of violence ... needs to end. It ends when someone does not reach for a gun,” but reaches for the phone to call police.
He added: “That’s real justice — not revenge.”
Contributing: Sam Kelly, Frank Main, Carly Behm, Sam Charles, Emmanuel Camarillo
