Nearly 1,400 people shot this year as Chicago braces for summer violence

The number of people shot in Chicago is running 50% above the figure from this time last year as the city braces for the summer, traditionally its most violent period.

So far this year, at least 1,382 people have been shot in Chicago, and at least 244 of them have died of their wounds. Last year at this time, 904 people had been shot, 157 of them fatally.

May already has seen summer-like gun violence. More people have been killed so far this month than in all of May 2015.

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The toll from this past weekend was five dead and 40 wounded. Two weeks earlier, over the Mother’s Day weekend, eight people were killed and 42 were wounded in Chicago, the city’s most violent since the end of September, according to a Tribune analysis.

Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson released a brief statement over the weekend saying, “As we look toward the summer months ... violence will not be tolerated.” But he included no details on how his department plans to fight it.

The casualties from the weekend included a dispatcher for the city’s 311 city services system who was shot and killed as she left a Starbucks about two blocks from police headquarters. Yvonne Nelson was hit in the chest when a gunman opened fire on a rival nearby, police said.

On Saturday evening, nine people were shot -- one fatally -- in about an hour and a half, according to police. That included two separate incidents in which three people were wounded by gunfire and a shooting in Englewood that left a 26-year-old man dead.

Englewood saw another fatal shooting outside a liquor store at Garfield Boulevard and State Street. Semial Sigle was fighting with two other men outside Midway Liquors after midnight Saturday when someone fired shots, hitting him in the chest. He was taken to Stroger Hospital and pronounced dead.

Less than three hours later, police responding to the back of a residence on South Ellis Avenue found Michael Wickliffe with gunshot wounds to the abdomen and arm. Wickliffe, of suburban Harvey, was pronounced dead at Jackson Park Hospital.

The weekend’s most recent homicide was Sunday afternoon in Park Manor, when 20-year-old Gregory Carr was shot several times in a drive-by. He lived less than a block away from where he was killed, officials said.

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