The war zone known as Chicago had yet another bloody weekend. Eight people were killed, including a 16-year-old boy, while at least 43 others were wounded in weekend shootings across the city.
STORY: 40+ Shot In Chicago And The Weekend Isn’t Even Over Yet!
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Joseph Briggs was the youngest to die in the weekend gun violence, just outside his Marquette Park home.
Joseph was shot in the head on his front porch in the 6100 block of South Rockwell when gunfire rang out from a gray vehicle about 8 p.m. Saturday.
Chicago police believe that the shooting might be gang-related.
Briggs was pronounced dead at 1:40 a.m. at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, according to the medical examiner’s office.
Joseph’s grieving grandmother, who has been raising him and his sisters, believes her grandson was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, Josephine Briggs said.
Ms. Briggs said that the area has been like a shooting gallery of late — so much so, she had thought about relocating:
“There’s been a lot of shootings on this block…Once I bury him, I’m going to try and move.”
Joseph was a junior at Gage Park High School who enjoyed football and basketball, said his grandmother.
“He [had] a nice personality. He always [was] smiling. Every time you see him he got a big smile on his face. He was just a happy grandson.”
As reported by the Chicago Sun-Times:
In addition to the eight slayings, another 43 — mostly men ranging in age from 17 to 50 — were injured in a spate of shootings on the South and West sides since Friday afternoon. Most happened Saturday into Sunday morning.
In a separate Saturday shooting, two brothers were shot as they sat in a car at 111th and Edbrooke, in the city’s Roseland neighborhood.
About 10:20 a.m. Saturday, the siblings were sitting inside a parked sedan when a dark-colored sport-utility vehicle drove up and shots were fired, according to police. Derrick Wilkerson, 21, who lived at 118th and Indiana, was shot in the chest and later died at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn.
His 19-year-old brother suffered gunshot wounds to both arms and was expected to survive, authorities said.
Hours earlier a robbery attempt in the South Side’s Park Manor neighborhood turned deadly in yet another shooting early Saturday morning. Kenneth J. Jones, 27, of the 3800 block of South Cottage Grove, was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in the 6800 block of South Indiana, officials said.
Rashuan Stephany, 22, of the 1300 block of West 49th, and Mario Jackson, 26, of the 5100 block of South Morgan, died a short time later at Stroger Hospital, according to the medical examiner’s office.
Two separate shootings in the Southwest Side Lawndale neighborhood left 10 people wounded late Saturday and early Sunday: one in the 1300 block of South Avers and another in the 3300 block of West Douglas. The most seriously hurt was a 17-year-old shot in the abdomen at the Douglas Street address. The teen was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital in serious condition.
In a shooting late Sunday, at least five people were wounded — two fatally — during a fight on the South Side. The large fight broke out near the intersection of Halsted and 50th Place.
The violence is Chicago has been on the rise as of late, as homicides in the Windy City so far this year were up nearly 50 percent when compared to last year.
(Delwanna Briggs, 19, right, is comforted by a family friend Sunday outside her Southwest Side home. Her 16-year-old brother, Joseph, was killed in a shooting Saturday. (Michael Tercha, Tribune photo / June 10, 2012)
SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times
