CHICAGO — Lumes Pancake House in Morgan Park on Chicago’s Far Southwest Side is a regular stop for the after-church crowd. If you don’t know it, you’ve been someplace similar. Friendly. Busy. Open for breakfast and lunch. The restaurant adjoins a residential neighborhood. A hot dog stand and sports center sit a block away, both frequented by moms with strollers and kids on bikes.
If you were at the pancake house Sunday just before 2 p.m., eating eggs or French toast under the outdoor tent, you know what happened: another of this summer’s brazen shootings. It was an unhinged scene from Chicago 2020 that brings to mind — much as you might wish to deny it — the notorious Chicago of Al Capone’s era.
According to police and Tribune reporting, a white Audi pulled up to the restaurant. Three men headed into the tent and started firing. They knew whom they wanted to kill, a 31-year-old man having a meal with several people, including the mother of his 3-month-old daughter and the baby. After shooting their target, Devon Welsh, the suspects stood over him and shot him again. Welsh died, and four others were hit by gunfire. As the Audi fled, someone else in the restaurant sprinted outside, fired back at the vehicle and then ran off.
The restaurant, with five people bleeding on the ground, erupted into chaos as patrons dialed 911 for help.
Does the danger make you think twice about living in Chicago? “The victim was 100% targeted,” said Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan, as if to assure skittish residents that the restaurant slaying wasn’t a random act. Not that his assertion would help much. How are Chicagoans supposed to keep accepting reassurances that the city is strong and recoverable when every week adds to the tally of dead and wounded?
Think back a few Tuesdays to the afternoon on fashionable East Oak Street when four gunmen jumped out of two cars and opened fire at Carlton Weekly, the rapper known as FBG Duck, killing him. Police said Weekly was a member of a Gangster Disciplines faction that had been feuding with another gang. As of Monday afternoon, police hadn’t disclosed a motive for the pancake house slaying. Does it matter anymore?
This summer has been excruciatingly violent in Chicago, with numerous young children and babies killed after getting in the way of bullets meant for others. In separate incidents, two kids died when they were shot while riding in the back seat of a vehicle. There was an ambush of a funeral in July that wounded more than a dozen people. In June, 13-year-old Amaria Jones was killed by a stray bullet that sailed into her house while she was showing her mother a dance move. “I turned around and I was looking for her and she was on the ground reaching out like this, holding her neck,” Lawanda Jones said in a TV interview. “I was like, what?! What?! What?!”
Through Sunday the Chicago Police Department reported 505 homicides this year, a 66% increase over last year. The number of shooting victims increased 56% to 2,703 from 1,734. Recent Monday morning tallies of weekend violence have made for brutal reading. There were 10 people killed, more than 40 wounded this past weekend. The Tribune identified 10 separate shootings, including three homicides, in just three hours or so starting Sunday at 2 a.m. In one incident, officers making a traffic stop were hit by gunfire and hospitalized. Ten Chicago police officers have been shot this year, 41 have been fired upon.
What is happening in Chicago? Superintendent David Brown’s answer Monday was vague, because there is no simple explanation, and chilling. “Violent offenders have acted with impunity, much more than we’ve seen in the past,” said Brown, describing his first summer on the job. “There’s this sense of lawlessness among violent offenders.”
Chicago is not lawless, but mayhem feels like it’s spiraling out of control. The police chief and Mayor Lori Lightfoot aren’t running away from the problem. They know the city’s in the grip of something frightening and frustrating. Brown has reconstituted the department’s roving anti-gang task force and says he sees progress. Killings have decreased 50% and shootings have decreased 15% over the past six weeks. So this is … progress.
Imagine Monday mornings without it.
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September 03, 2020 at 12:23PM
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Other voices: Chicago mayhem is out of control - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
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