43 people were wounded and 13 killed, including a 1-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl, in weekend shootings in Chicago.
One-year-old Sincere Gaston was shot near Halsted and 60th in Englewood around 2 p.m. on Saturday.
Chicago police said a 22-year-old mother was driving home from the laundromat when another car pulled alongside her vehicle and someone inside fired at least seven shots at her.
The woman was grazed by a bullet, but her infant son, who was strapped into his carseat in the back, was shot in the chest.
The frantic mom drove her mortally wounded son to St. Bernard Hospital, where Sincere was pronounced dead from a single gunshot wound to the chest.
The young mom was transferred to another hospital to treat her injury, but she was reluctant to leave her deceased child behind.
“She didn’t even want to go and get her wound taken care because she didn’t want to leave where her child was,” Pastor Donovan Price told ABC7 News.
“I just want to sit on the curb and cry,” added Pastor Price.
Police believe the young mom was targeted by the gunman.
“I don’t think it was random because of the amount of times it was fired upon,” said Chicago Police Chief of Operations Fred Waller.
Elsewhere in Chicago, a 10-year-old girl was hit by a stray bullet in her Logan Square home.
Lina Nunez was sitting on a sofa in her family’s apartment about 9:40 p.m. in the 3500 block of West Dickens Avenue when a stray bullet came through a window and struck her in the head, CBS Chicago reports.
“It’s unacceptable, it’s crazy, it’s immoral,” said Fr. Michael Pfleger, pastor at St. Sabina Parish in Chicago. “And this whole city should be outraged. We’re burying our babies. We’re buying our future. We’re burying our hope.”
The fatal shootings come after 104 people were shot and 13 killed, including a 3-year-old boy, over Father’s Day weekend.
Mekhi James was in his carseat on his way home from getting a haircut when he was shot and killed on Saturday.
A $13,000 reward has been offered for information leading to his killer.
“You can only run for so long until somebody gives us that information or gives us a call,” community activist Andrew Holmes said.
“When is this going to stop?” Police Chief Waller asked. “When are we going to say enough is enough?”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot addressed the ongoing violence on Twitter.com on Saturday.
“As a mother, I am tired of the funerals. I am tired of burying our children,” Lightfoot tweeted.
The pain of losing a child never goes away. Today, we lost more young people to the gun violence epidemic: a 17-year-old in Humboldt Park and a 1-year-old in Englewood. As a mother, I am tired of the funerals. I am tired of burying our children.
— Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) June 27, 2020
“We all have a role in this fight for the safety of our communities,” Lightfoot said. “I ask that anyone with information on these incidents please come forward or submit a tip anonymously at http://cpdtip.com.”
The mayor also clapped back at President Trump who compared her city to “living in hell.”
The president wrote a letter to Governor JB Pritzker and Mayor Lightfoot criticizing them for their “lack of leadership”.
Lightfoot dismissed Trump’s letter as a “stunt”, saying, “I don’t need leadership lessons from Donald Trump.”
