Chicago's shooters are getting younger, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson revealed Saturday, saying that the average age is now about 15 or 16, DNAinfo reports.
"When I started as a patrolman in 1988, the average age of our shooters [was] 19, 20 years old," Johnson told a crowd gathered at Simeon Career Academy, a vocational high school on the city's South Side, over the weekend. "Right now the average is 15, 16 years old."
Johnson said that the fact that shooters are getting younger means they are not living on their own or paying rent or bills. The superintendent urged parents and guardians to intervene to help with the violence that the city is experiencing. Johnson, along with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, called on parents, politicians, religious leaders, community members and school leaders alike to reach out to youths to help curb the violence.
"Our kids should not grow up thinking it's normal to hear gunfire every day," Johnson said.
According to DNAinfo, about 42 percent of people killed in Chicago in 2016 so far have been younger than 24. Many of them have died in shootings.
Read more at DNAinfo.