A relatively peaceful period in the Chicago Police Department’s Deering District ended late Saturday with a quick succession of four drive-by shootings that left two dead.
“It was just insane last night,” Lt. Donald Holmen said. “It was very busy.”
The shootings erupted in a district where the first six months of 2004 passed with fewer than half the 21 homicides experienced in the same time frame last year. Violent crimes overall are down 12.6 percent.
The Southwest Side district’s first shooting this weekend took place at 11:50 p.m. Saturday, when a 20-year-old man was fatally wounded in the 4300 block of South Oakley Avenue, police said. A security guard at a nearby factory told police he saw a dark car turn its lights off and roll toward the man from the south. It stopped, the occupants fired, and the car sped off, police said.
The victim, who police believe may have been a gang member, remained unidentified Sunday.
Twenty-five minutes later and about 10 blocks away, two men got out of a gray van and fired four shots from a handgun at a group of people standing near the CTA Orange Line station at 4900 S. Western Ave., police said. A 19-year-old man was taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital with multiple wounds in his abdomen and groin and was reported to be in critical condition, police said.
At 12:30 a.m., another 19-year-old died after he was targeted by gunmen in the 1900 block of West Garfield Boulevard. A 1980s-vintage Chevrolet rolled up, and two men inside shot Jason Blackman, who lived in the 5400 block of South Wolcott Avenue, in the chest and leg, police said.
Farther east, in the 500 block of West Garfield, the driver of a Lincoln was shot after he was chased by pursuers in a green Pontiac. The driver, a 21-year-old man, was taken critically injured to Stroger Hospital, police said.
