Gunfire from a passing car ripped into a crowd of clubgoers in the River North neighborhood, the police said.
Four people died and 14 others were injured late Wednesday night when shots were fired into a crowd outside a lounge in downtown Chicago, the police said.
Gun violence has been declining recently in the city, and public safety officials were gearing up for a busy holiday weekend. The Fourth of July is often tarnished by gun violence in Chicago, and city leaders were already planning to hold a news conference on Thursday to discuss their weekend safety plans, even before the latest killings.
The Chicago police said an unknown number of shooters opened fire at around 11 p.m. from a dark-colored vehicle as it drove along Chicago Avenue in the city’s River North neighborhood, about a mile from Lake Michigan near the northern edge of downtown. Social media posts suggested that a local rapper, Mello Buckzz, was hosting a private event at the lounge Wednesday evening to celebrate her release of a new album.
Mello Buckzz posted on her Instagram early Thursday, saying that her boyfriend and other friends were among the victims of the shooting. “My heart hurt so bad,” she wrote, adding a crying emoji.
The police said that those killed in the shooting were two men, ages 24 and 25, and two women, ages 26 and 27. Eleven women and three men, ranging in age from 21 to 32, were injured, the police said. Three of the women were in critical condition. None of the names of victims were released as of Thursday morning, and no arrests had been announced.
Many nights in Chicago are marred by multiple shootings, and police records show that late Wednesday and early Thursday were no exception. Shortly before the drive-by on Chicago Avenue, a man’s head was grazed by a bullet in another part of town. Not long after midnight, two people were wounded and one woman was killed in two more shootings. And around 3:15 a.m., four people were shot and injured, two of them critically, in a neighborhood on the city’s Far South Side.