The bloody violence in Chicago took no time off for Father’s Day as the final tally ended with 37 shot and 9 killed. The dead included a 17-year-old, shot with a rifle, and a Mexican man who was on his nation’s version of the TV show The Voice, shot three times in the head.
One of the last people killed during the weekend was a 17-year-old teen shot in front of a Catholic Church with what police claimed was a “high-powered rifle.”
The teen was shot by an assailant who drove up next to him and immediately opened fire, leaving “literally dozens of empty shell casings on the street,” according to Chief of Detectives Eugene Roy.
Chief Roy said the shooting was likely gang-related.
The Mexican community in the city was also shocked with the murder of Mexican singer Alejandro Jano Fuentes. The 45-year-old celebrity seemed to have been specifically targeted, friends said.
Fuentes was a 2011 contestant on La Voz, the Mexican version of America’s The Voice.
The attack occurred outside the singer’s Tras Bambalinas School in the city’s Brighton Park neighborhood.
Police feel the singer may have been the victim of a failed carjacking or robbery, but friends think he was targeted for murder as he was the only one shot, nothing was taken from his body, and he was hit with three purposeful rounds to the head.
Those were but two incidents in a bloody weekend. The bloodletting started on Friday with two killed and seven others shot. But that was a drop in the bloody bucket compared to Saturday, which saw an incredible 27 shootings with six deaths. Father’s Day itself was less violent with ten shootings and one death.
The weekend also saw a large number of drunken fights and one stabbing during the city’s gay pride fest.
The weekend’s mayhem brought the year’s violence to 1,789 total shot and 276 shot and killed.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston, or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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