Dec. 21--Three men were killed and at least 26 people were wounded over the weekend in Chicago as the number of shooting victims in the city passed the 2,900 mark for the year.
Among those killed was 71-year-old Fredell Bryant, who was shot twice in the chest when he answered the door at his Back of the Yards home early Sunday morning, according to police.
Bryant's daughter, Darncella Montgomery, said she heard someone pounding on the door around 6 a.m., then heard two gunshots. She ran upstairs and found her father lying on the floor.
"Who knocks on somebody's front door and shoots them down like they're a dog on the street?" asked Montgomery, 35.
A half an hour earlier, there was another shooting in the Back of the Yard that killed a man and wounded another, according to Officer Bari Lemmon, a police spokeswoman.
The two were in a car in the 5400 block of South Laflin Street when shots were fired, Lemmon said. A 31-year-old man was shot in the chest and taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. A 33-year-old man was grazed in the head and taken to Stroger, where he was treated and released.
The third fatal shooting occurred around 4 p.m. Sunday when a 24-year-old man was hit in the back in the North Austin neighborhood on the West Side, according to Officer Amina Greer, a police spokeswoman.
The man was discovered outside in the 5400 block of West Hirsch Street, Greer said. He was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in critical condition, and he was later pronounced dead, she said.
The weekend toll brought to 2,907 the number of shooings in Chicago so far this year, more than 400 above this time last year, according to statistics kept by the Tribune. There have been about 465 homicides so far this year, at least 35 more than last year at this time.
The weekend started with 13 people wounded in shootings between Friday evening and early Saturday morning, police said. Six of them were shot within a two-hour span early Saturday.
Two people were killed and 8 others were wounded between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, police said.
Another man was killed and five people, including two 17-year-old boys, were wounded between Sunday afternoon and early Monday morning.
