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Chicago Rings in New Year’s Day with 2 Dead, 15 Shot

As the nation celebrated New Year’s Day, most spending the day off work with family, the denizens of Chicago were working overtime to rack up victims. This year, on New Year’s Day, Chicago gang warfare racked up 2 deaths and 15 shot.

According to Chicago’s ABC affiliate, two were killed during New Year’s Day. In fact, 2016 was only about five minutes old before the first shooting of the year resulted in the city’s first wounded victim. At five minutes after 12 on Friday morning, January 1, a 34-year-old woman was wounded in the hand when a bullet ripped through the window of her home.

But the new year made it all the way to 2 AM before the city’s first homicide occurred.

The victim was 24-year-old Deandre Holiday, a gang member shot in the chest and killed by a rival gang.

For the next several hours and into the first day of the year, the shootings piled up, with single, double, and triple shootings at a stretch occurring throughout the day.

Late on Thursday, the city released its 2015 crime statistics showing that there were at least 50 more homicides for 2015 over those of 2014.

Interim Chicago Police Superintendent John Escalante insisted that Chicago isn’t alone with its higher rate of homicides.

“But we’re not unique. Chicago is not unique,” Escalante told the media. “Certainly I’m not trying to take the spotlight off Chicago. But if you look at every other major city across country, everyone has dealt with a spike and increase in violent crime.”

Indeed, homicide rates are up in Washington D.C., New York City, Kansas City, and other major American metropolises.

Escalante went on to praise the department because crime was down in most other areas besides murder.

The final totals for Chicago’s violence for 2014 is 2,553 shot and 442 shot and killed, with 499 total homicides of all causes. This is an increase over 2014’s rate of 2,229 shot and 390 shot and killed. Total homicides for 2014 stood at 460.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston, or email the author at [email protected].

 

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/01/01/chicago-rings-new-years-day-2-dead-15-shot/

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