Everything about her was innocent.
Three major U.S. cities struggling to curb a surge in gun violence collectively had at least 70 people shot, 16 dead, including a 7-year-old girl, in multiple shootings this weekend, according to police.
The shootings in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago came as all three cities have seen sharp increases in the numbers of shootings in 2021.
In Chicago, at least 52 people were shot between 6 p.m. on Friday and 11:59 p.m. Sunday, nine of them fatally, according to the Chicago Police Department. Twenty-three of the shootings occurred over just a 4-hour period between 12:26 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. on Sunday, according to incident reports reviewed by ABC News.
Just before 3 p.m. on Sunday, a 7-year-old girl was killed and her 6-year-old sister was seriously wounded when someone opened fire on a parked vehicle they were sitting in the Belmont Central neighborhood on the city’s Northwest Side, police said. The 7-year-old was shot in the chest and later died at a hospital.
Regina Broughton told ABC station WLS in Chicago that her granddaughter, Serenity Broughton, was the child who was killed and Serenity’s little sister, Aubrey, is fighting for her life at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago.
Prior to this weekend, more than 2,123 people had been shot in Chicago this year, which is a 12% increase from the same time period in 2020, according to police department crime statistics. Before this weekend, Chicago has recorded 478 homicides, a 2% increase over last year at this time.
The shootings this weekend in Chicago followed last weekend’s violence, which saw 73 people shot in the city, 11 fatally.
