Nov. 22 (UPI) — A 14-year-old boy died and eight other teenagers were wounded in separate shootings in downtown Chicago hours after people were celebrating the start of the holiday season nearby.
The shooting occurred around 9:50 p.m. Friday, about four hours after the city’s official tree lighting at Daley Plaza and a few blocks away, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
The mass shooting was outside the Chicago Theater on State Street and the other an hour later near Federal Plaza.
“The holiday season is a time when we come together as a city. It’s when we spend time with our family and our loved ones,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said. “This is the opposite type of behavior that anybody wants to see. We have too many guns and too many young people who don’t value their own lives or the lives of others.”
According to reports, a so-called teen takeover occurred after the tree lighting, and was described as 300 teens rioting in the streets.
Johnson said the chaos “set us back as a city, and it evokes fear.”
Several ambulances and police presence were seen with police tape wrapped across State Street near the Chicago Theater and Joffrey Ballet, according to WMAQ-TV, and WLS-TV reported gunfire outside its studios.
Officers on patrol “observed a large group on the sidewalk” and heard gunshots that sent people scattering, according to the Chicago Police Department.
Three boys aged 14 to 17 had graze wounds, while two others, aged 14 and 16, suffered leg wounds, while a 14-year-old girl was shot in the hip.
The seventh victim, a 13-year-old girl, was shot in the leg and taken to Lurie Children’s Hospital in fair condition.
Alderman Brian Hopkins initially posted on X that “300 juveniles rioting in the Loop now, at least 5 victims shot, one critical with life threatening gunshot wound to torso. Multiple police officers attacked and injured with mace and stun guns, at least one PO hospitalized.”
Less than an hour later at 10:40 p.m., a few blocks away, one person died with multiple gunshot wounds at Northwestern Memorial and an 18-year-old was found in serious condition with a leg wound.
Five weapons were recovered and 18 arrests were made throughout, but those in custody weren’t considered suspects in the shootings, Johnson said.
“No parent wants to get that terrible, life-altering call,” Johnson said Saturday morning at an unrelated event on the West Side. “It is senseless violence like these shootings that makes us all feel unsafe, and it has left too many families in Chicago reeling.”
The city had deployed 700 additional police officers for the tree lighting along with community violence intervention workers.
“Clearly what we put in place did not do enough to prevent what we were concerned about from actually manifesting,” Johnson said.
The mayor said additional police personnel were being deployed for Saturday night’s Mag Mile Lights Festival.
“We will continue to make the necessary adjustments as we move along to ensure that these large, peaceful, citywide events can take place without the terror and the harm of gun violence,” the mayor added.
The City Council has vetoed a “snap curfew” of gatherings of young people anywhere in the city with 30 minutes’ notice.
“I’m the first person to recognize that we have more work to do in this city to provide safe spaces for our young people. But these types of violent gatherings can never be an alternative, nor can they be normalized,” Johnson said.
“We need to deter them from attending large, unsanctioned after-gatherings, where weapons are likely to be present. There’s always more we as adults can do to make sure that we know where our kids are and what they are doing.”
President Donald Trump has decried the violence in the city, though violent crime has decreased for the past several years.
Trump has taken credit for recent declines there, giving credit to the Operation Midway Blitz immigration raids his administration launched in September.
“I am proud to announce that Chicago, Illinois, despite all of the radical opposition and obstruction we have from the Mayor and Governor, has seen Car Theft, Shootings, Robberies, Violent Crime, and everything else drop dramatically,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Nov. 12.
Through Nov. 14, there have been 373 people killed in the city this year, which is 242 less than the same period in 2024, according to tracking by the Chicago Tribune.
In 2024, a total of 573 people were killed in Chicago.
