Some of these cases seem to be just disputes, often among adolescents, and those disputes are played out with firearms, not with fists
At least six people including a Pennsylvania state trooper were killed and dozens injured in a string of weekend violence and mass shootings across the U.S.
The shootings in suburban Chicago, Washington state, Pennsylvania, St. Louis, Southern California and Baltimore follow a surge in homicides and other violence over the past several years that experts say accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic.
There’s no question there’s been a spike in violence, said Daniel Nagin, a professor of public policy and statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. Some of these cases seem to be just disputes, often among adolescents, and those disputes are played out with firearms, not with fists.
Researchers disagree over the cause of the increase. Theories include the possibility that violence is driven by the prevalence of guns in America, or by less aggressive police tactics or a decline in prosecutions for misdemeanor weapon offenses, Nagin said.
As of Sunday evening, none of the weekend events fit the definition of a mass killing, because fewer than four people died at each location. However, the number of injured in most of the cases does match the widely accepted definition for mass shootings.
Here’s a look at the shootings this weekend:
WILLOWBROOK, ILLINOIS
At least 23 people were shot, one fatally, early Sunday in a suburban Chicago parking lot where hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate Juneteenth, authorities said.
The DuPage County sheriff’s office described a peaceful gathering that suddenly turned violent as a number of people fired multiple shots into the crowd in Willowbrook, Illinois, about 20 miles southwest of Chicago.
A motive for the attack wasn’t immediately known. Sheriff’s spokesman Robert Carroll said authorities were interviewing persons of interest in the shooting, the Daily Herald reported.
A witness, Markeshia Avery, said the celebration was meant to mark Juneteenth, Monday’s federal holiday commemorating the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.
