ABC 7 is reporting that Chicago's murder rate continues to drop, but not in Englewood, on the predominantly black South Side. Citing statistics from the Chicago Sun-Times, the site says that 56 people have been killed in the neighborhood this year — a 40 percent increase since 2010.
The news come as police investigators work to solve the horrific murders of two Chicago high school students, who were gunned down on Tuesday inside a Church's Chicken in Englewood.
As families of the two teens called for an end to the violence, investigators reportedly held a 23-year-old man as a person of interest for questioning in the shootings.
ABC 7 reports:
Through her pain, the mother of 17-year-old Dantril Brown offered a kind gesture to the person who killed her son, saying she was not mad. Brown was a junior at Prosser Career Academy. He wanted to be a cook. He was looking forward to getting a car, his mother said.
"You took my dreams away. My baby ain't going to have no baby," said mom Regina Brown.
Juwan Ross, 16, was a sophomore at Robeson High School. He dreamed of playing professional basketball. His mother sent him to the restaurant to get something to eat.
"It's hard, and they don't know it is hard when you take someone's kid from them. They don't know how a person feels," said mom Willamae Jackson.
Families and friends of the two teens held separate vigils outside the closed restaurant Wednesday. On Tuesday night, investigators say two people got into an argument outside. One chased the other inside and started shooting, wounding five and killing the two teens. It's still not known if the shooter's target is among the victims, but relatives of Ross and Brown say they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Words cannot express the sorrow that overcomes us when we think about the young lives lost in this or any other violent episode. We, too, call for an end to the violence.