Two people were killed and at least 30 others injured in mass shootings in three US states overnight, authorities said on Saturday, fueling concerns that gun violence could continue into the summer as Covid-19 restrictions ease and more people can socialize freely.
None of the attacks, which occurred late Friday or early Saturday in the Texan capital, Austin, Chicago, and Savannah, Georgia, were not arrested until Saturday afternoon.
In Austin, authorities were looking for two male suspects in an early Saturday shooting in a crowded pedestrian street full of bars and restaurants. 14 people were injured, including two life-threatening, in the shooting, which according to the provisional police chief of the city should have started as a dispute between two parties.
In Chicago, a woman was killed and nine other people injured when two men opened fire on a group standing on a sidewalk in the Chatham neighborhood of the city’s South Side. The riflemen also escaped and had not been identified by Saturday afternoon.
In the southern Georgian city of Savannah, police said a man was killed and seven other people were injured in a mass shooting on Friday evening. Two of the wounded are children – an 18-month-old and a 13-year-old.
Savannah Police Chief Roy Minter Jr said the shooting could be linked to an ongoing argument between two groups, citing reports of shots fired at the same apartment complex earlier this week.
“It is very worrying what we see across the country and how much gun violence we see across the country,” he told reporters on Saturday. “It’s disturbing and it’s pointless.”
The attacks come amid a relaxation of Covid-19 pandemic restrictions in much of the country, including Chicago, which on Friday lifted many of its remaining protections. Many hoped an increase in US shootings and homicides last year was an anomaly, possibly caused by pandemic stress amid a surge in gun ownership and policing debate. But those rates are still higher than in pre-pandemic times, including in cities that refused to cut police spending after George Floyd’s death and in cities that made modest cuts.
“The hope was that this could just be a statistical slip that would subside,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. “That didn’t happen. And that is what really makes the bosses fear that we may enter a new period in which we will see a reversal of the 20 year decline in these crimes. “
Tracking down the ups and downs of crime is always complicated, but violent crime often increases during the summer months. Weekend evenings and the early hours of the morning are also common windows for filming.
Many types of crime have decreased in 2020 and stayed lower this year, suggesting that the pandemic and activism and riot sparked by the response to Floyd’s death did not result in an overall increase in crime.
The 17 mass shootings in 2020 were the lowest annual total in a decade, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today, and Northeastern University. The database tracks all mass murders, including shootings, defined as four or more deaths excluding the perpetrator.
According to that definition, there have been 17 mass murders this year, 16 of them, said James Alan Fox, criminologist and professor at Northeastern University.
The Gun Violence Archive, which monitors media and police reports to track gun violence, defines mass shootings as those in which four or more people were shot regardless of whether they died. According to the database, more than 8,700 people died from gun violence in the United States this year.
The GVA also noted that the mass shootings rose to around 600 in 2020, which was more than any previous six years it tracked in statistics. According to this year’s count, there have been at least 267 mass shootings in the US so far, including the last three overnight from Friday to Saturday.
“It’s worrying,” said Fox. “We have a mix of people who are starting to be out in public. We have many divisions. And we have more guns and warm weather. It’s a potentially fatal mix. “
إرسال تعليق