Separate shootings in Chicago and New Orleans killed two people – including an eight-year-old girl – while wounding at least 22 others over the weekend in some of the US’s latest instances of mass gun violence.
In Chicago, an eight-year old girl was fatally shot while standing outside a family party on Saturday night in the city’s South Side, Associated Press reported.
Eleven people were injured – including a one-year-old boy and an eight-year-old boy – who were both taken to area hospitals in critical condition.
Police have said that the shooting was probably “gang-related”. No one was in custody for the attack as of early Monday.
Eleven other people were injured – and a woman was killed – in a shooting outside a popular New Orleans music club on Sunday evening, WWL Louisiana reported.
The woman was killed near Republic Nola, a music venue located in the city’s popular Warehouse District neighborhood.
The violence took place less than two miles away from the French Quarter festival, hours after the four-day music, food and mixology celebration had wrapped.
The shootings in New Orleans and Chicago were among at least 114 mass shootings in the US so far this year as of Monday morning, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That is a rate of more than one a day.
The non-partisan archive defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more victims are killed or wounded. The US’s perennially high numbers of mass shootings have prompted calls from some quarters for Congress to enact more meaningful gun control measures, though such requests have largely gone unheeded.
Meanwhile, in an unrelated case, two law enforcement officers in upstate New York were shot to death on Sunday night in an exchange of gunfire with a criminal suspect who was also killed.
In Liverpool, New York, a suburb of Syracuse, two police officers “initiated a traffic stop on a suspicious vehicle”, later using the car’s license plate to track it to a Liverpool residence, CBS News reported.
After arriving to that home, officers began inspecting the vehicle and saw what appeared to be weapons.
A person in the home soon exchanged gunfire with the officers. The two officers and the suspected shooter were all pronounced dead at the Upstate University hospital in Syracuse.
In a post to X Kathy Hochul, the New York governor, decried the “senseless killing” of the two officers.
“My prayers are with their families, loved ones, and their colleagues. New York will never forget their heroism and service,” Hochul said in a statement.
