Nearly 50 people shot in Chicago over holiday weekend

CHICAGO – Five people were wounded in shootings in Chicago early Monday, bringing to almost 50 the number of people shot in the city since Christmas weekend began Friday afternoon.

Much of the violence happened in areas “with historical gang conflicts on the south and west side of Chicago,” said Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department.

He also referred to the department’s “strategic subject list,” which is generated daily from a computerized algorithm and assigns a score from 1 to 500 based on such factors as a person’s arrests and the activities of his or her associates. Those people with a score in the upper 200s or higher are considered in danger of being shot or of shooting someone else.

“Ninety percent of those fatally wounded had gang affiliations, criminal histories and were pre-identified by the department’s strategic subject algorithm as being a potential suspect or victim of gun violence,” Guglielmi said.

The shootings Monday included a man shot in each leg in the North Lawndale neighborhood, a man shot in the hand in Englewood and two people in the Park Manor neighborhood who were shot, one in the head, authorities said.

Monday morning’s shootings came after two brothers were killed and five other people were wounded while shooting dice at a family Christmas party in East Chatham late Sunday.

That shooting, and the others Sunday, added to the tolls this year in Chicago, where more than 700 homicides have been recorded and more than 4,000 people have been shot – a level of violence not seen in Chicago since the late 1990s. Last year, 488 people were killed in Chicago.