Chicago girl jumping rope shot dead
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Gabriel Falcon
AC360° Writer
An 8-year-old girl, in Chicago, who was jumping rope with a playmate was shot to death by unknown gunmen who opened fire from their bicycles, authorities said. The other girl, who is 7, was grazed in the head by a bullet and is listed in fair condition at a local hospital, police said. Published reports identified the injured girl as the victim’s cousin.
The incident happened Tuesday shortly before 8pm in the south side of the city, investigators said. Officer Robert Perez, a spokesman for the Chicago Police, told CNN two African-American men riding on bikes approached the girls who were jumping rope on the porch of a home.
“We don’t know who or what the target was,” Perez told CNN, “that hasn’t been determined.” Police said they did not know if the shooting was gang related. Detectives “are looking at all possible leads and they do not have anyone arrested for the incident and they are still interviewing witnesses,” Perez said.
The girl who was killed was in the 3rd grade at Kohn Elementary School, said Chicago schools spokeswoman Monique Bond.
The shooting comes just two days after the Chicago Police announced that murders were down 1.5% in July after a 4-month increase.
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Filed under: Crime & Punishment • Gabe Falcon |
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You dont care if our right to bare arms is in the constitution? Well maybe you should just keep your mouth shut? Because that right is in the constitution too!
To all the Arizona racists..... I bet this happened because of illegals right?
@Erica Please exercise more diligence in your research. All reliable, statistical data reveals no drop in violent crimes as a result of gun control. Plain and simple truth is that gun control only makes it more difficult for law abiding citizens to protect themselves, while those intending on using a gun to commit a crime, are still able to obtain one with ease. Did people stop drinking alcohol during prohibition?
No, gun control isn't the issue because these shooters don't get guns legally! The answer is Police Organized neighborhood watch, cameras on street corners, curfew, localized police sub-stations, church and community involvement. * I realize there's a hot legal debate about cameras...but debate me right now as to whether it would aid in getting leads on who shot those children...I dare ya!
Erica,
it is already illegal for American citizens to own or purchase hand guns in Chicago. So that ban did nothing to stop this person from getting a handgun and shooting an innocent person.
Guns will always be a problem. They need to be limited, however the low functioning right wingers will keep their drum beat mantra of 'its out second amendment right' blah blah blah.... But when it comes to immigrants they say "Lets change the 14th amendment' blah blah blah These wackos, yes all gun rights people are wackos, will never stop until their own kids are killed by their own guns. We need to be like Europe and the rest of the world in limiting guns. It the only right, sane thing to do.
Forget the guns, this comes down to family values. I can almost guarantee that these criminals come from a broken home and do not have father figures in their lives. Their mothers likely have 4 to 6 other kids and dont believe in birth control or holding the "sperm" donors accountable for their actions. The mothers likely have low paying jobs and/or are on welfare. The kids are likely not looked after, roam the streets, have no role models other than the thigs they see every day. They have grown up in this environment and a persons life doesnt mean a thing. Ignorance, breeds ignorance squared, breeds criminals like this. Police cannot patrol every corner......parenting, family values, and teaching respect at an early age minimizes these horrific events. Future mothers keep your legs close and if you cant, keep the father accountable.....too many babies daddys in this world.
It is amazing how things have changed from thirty years ago. What kind of cowards will shoot a child!
First, this is an horrible tragedy.
Second, for those against further gun control, what you're basically saying is that there is nothing that can be done about this, except perhaps keep you kids indoors at all times. How can we "control thugs" as another poster suggested if we can't control inanimate objects like guns? With technology today, handguns could be designed to limit who can fire it, if not for groups like the NRA.
It should also be noted that although Chicago may have strict gun control laws, often times criminals are able to get guns from surrounding municipalities with more lax laws. If you're against gun control because only the criminals will have them, then why don't we make child porn legal
If it wasn't guns, it'd be rocks, stones, sticks, ropes, knives, swords, bombs, and so on and so on. If you want to kill or hurt someone, you'll find a way. And unfortunately, kids have killed kids for thousands of years. It's not like this is a new development.
Augsbee: Bulloney. Making stuff up because it's fun to bash others is really, really childish. You murder someone, you get a long sentence. Especially for firing at children like this.
Once again everyone wants to scream gun control. Chicago and the state of il have very strict gun control laws. I live here so I know. The article says the 2 were riding bikes. That would make you believe that they were at least under the age of 16. It would also make you believe that they were using handguns. The laws are in place that make it against the law for someone of that age to posess a handgun. I would also bet they had no FOID card. The laws are here they need to be enforced. My bet is if found they might do 8 or 10 years not the death penalty as they should. An eye for an eye people!
Those two little girls were Negroed. Meaning, they got zapped by Africans.
Reading the article it specifically points out the gunmen as African American. Were the two girls white?
Amen Mike and Dave!
@martini – You live in Juarez and you're asking how this could happen in the US??? Last time I read about Mexico it was about all the murders and drug cartel action. Families being decapitated and officials being assassinated. I believe Juarez was in the middle of the action! Gun control is not the answer. Home defense will be a thing of the past and the criminals will know exactly who's packing; them!
"It will continue to happen because if they catch them, throw them in jail, some nutty group will say they are victims of their environment and don't deserve to be in jail and that the judge was racist."
You watch to much news on TV.
"Criminals will *ALWAYS* be able to get guns – Gun laws only work for people that follow the law."
Can you back this up with any empirical evidence in other countries?
Why do we assume that "criminals will always get the guns"? Why should we accept this? Like another poster said, this does not happen in other countries. Why can't we stop criminals from getting guns?
Gun Control, would mean lesser guns available in the neighborhood.
Think about it, unknown gunment on bicycles, definetly we are looking at teen, pre-teen kids, who somehow got their hands on a gun, maybe from a legal owner or from an illegal owner.
If Guncontrol was present, assume for a second that this widespread availability of guns wasnt there, somehow this could have been avoided.
I have heard such stories only about African countries where kids are trained as military soldiers and they fire upon other kids. The most advanced country in the world still cannot control this.
Only a stupid liberal would think that gun control would stop senseless gang shootings. How can this happen in obama's state.
Another senseless tragedy involving innocent victims. I don't know what the answer to this problem is but something definitely has to be done. It's becoming an all too familiar and regular occurrence.
@Dave: Exactly who are the "type of people" that commit these crimes and what communities are they from?
Sad. It hurts my heart.
This is just the Chicago Drug Gangs supported by the Democrats and fed by the open border policy and the Mexican Cartels. Chicago has strict gun control. Only Democrat Drug Gang members can get guns! Token arrests keep the black community happy while the gangs murder the children. Go figure out why Obama lets black children be murdered?
It's nice to see that my comment discrediting the CPD was removed. I read a story on Yahoo! News about a shooting, and somebody that lives on the South Side said they called about a gang-related shooting and it took 45 MINUTES for police to arrive. Delete this comment moderator, so that no one dares to discredit the CPD's poor service.
What does this have with legal firearms ownership? I am terribly sorry that a child was killed and another injured but calling for more laws rather than enforcing the ones now in existence will accomplish little. Glad to hear that Juarez and Ireland don't have such problems. Gee, didn't I see both in the news?
Well it will keep happening in Chicago until everyone is allowed to have guns and shoot back.
I know you say it's in our constitution and even if it's illegal thugs will get guns, but the reality is that in those countries where guns are not allowed babies don't accidentally shoot each other and there are FAR less murders.
There are murders here in Canada, to be sure, and our gangs have guns but we had like 64 in BC all of last year, and many large US cities have many more than that each day, never mind a year....yes, you have higher population density, but there are still many, many less murders in countries with gun control, like the UK and Canada
The two men were on bicycles when their guns were used. I bet you the guns cost more than the bikes.
It broke my heart to read about two little girls being shot and one precious angel dying. It makes me sick to see what animals live in this world. My prayers go out to the families of both victims.
This is extremely tragic. My heart goes out the the parents of these girls. But let's not start shouting gun control. I saw a show about how prisoners used the prison's workshop to make a home made silenced pistol, and used it to kill a fellow inmate. Gun Control won't stop criminals from killing people. Look at the cities with the toughest gun control laws (like Chicago). They are the same cities with the hightest crime.
i've lived in chicago all my life. i can honestly tell you that the south side of this city is populated by the dumbest, ignorant, racist, most violent monkeys nature could ever produce. gangbanging, pimping and dealing drugs are their highest aspirations. their mothers are crack heads and the churches spread pamphets to teenage girls of color to discourage them from using birth control. they need to crop dust the entire south side of chicago with sterilization chemical agents.
You Americans are sick
You gun control people need to wake up! I'm as liberal as they come and from the California Bay Area, but it is just common sense that gun control laws only help criminals. In Chicago especially. One of the strictest guns control cities in the nation and their gun violence is through the roof. Compare that with big cities like Phoenix, Dallas, or Houston. All have lax gun laws and much less violent gun crime. Wake up! Law abiding citizens should have the right to protect themselves from scum like this!
Lynda, Gun control isn't going to stop anything. There was a handgun ban on Chicago for 30 years. Criminals get their guns/ammo illegally most of the time. If there was gun control, they wouldn't care. It wouldn't affect their supply.
yeah, tell gun control to the 20 people who were killed by guy going on a killing spree with a knife that they still haven't caught.
getting rid of guns, doesnt solve the question...It's like trying to enforce and un-enforcible law....the law become null and void. You cant get rid of guns in chicago, no more than you could outlaw liquor during prohibition. But you can help change the mind behind the gun. capture that strange perception towards life before it festers into selfishness, pride and stupidity in the form of a gang member.
That we can all do by raising our kids well, being there for our kids, being involved and stop making babies you dont want to be responsible for.
What is it about gun control you Americans do not understand!
Erica, highly unlikely these kids got past a background check to buy these guns at the neighborhood gun store.. criminals have an easier time getting guns than we do.. if they didn't get them here they would be getting hot guns from mexico. tougher gun laws just make it harder for the law abiding to defend themselves from the criminals who don't buy guns legally anyway..
How can you say murder rates are down? It's a bunch of bullsh!t. I live 30 minutes from Chicago and I see about 3 or 4 headlines each night saying that someone was shot or someone was killed. The CPD is just saying that the crime rate is down because they don't know how to do their jobs. I read a story where somebody said they reported a gang-related shooting in Chicago, and it took the police 45 MINUTES to get there.
This is the real terrorism we face in every city in America. While the authorities are spending hundreds of $Billions each year getting their panties in a twist regarding the myth of "al Qaeda" and all those "muslims in foreign countries out to get us", domestic terrorists, aka gangbangers kill 10s of thousands of Americans each year in every city, town and village nationwide, while the powers-that-be sit back and tolerate it. As a society, we're addicted to violence and guns, and keeping drugs illegal maintains a healthy bottom line for the prison-industrial-security complex, organized crime and street gangs.
Cowards! Yellow-bellied scum of the earth. The killers need to be taken out back and shot.
Down 1.5%?? Is that one less death for the month? I don't see much reason to drop your guard over that. It's terrible that your children aren't safe playing outside anymore.
Poor girl... get the guns off the streets of Chicago!
Matt – is a white country such as Ireland a good basis for your comment on getting rid of guns. "Oh if we get rid of guns then blacks will stop killing like in Ireland." Move the blacks to Ireland and see how much killing you see in the US of A.
shooting innocent children is horrifically evil, it is beyond murder , the criminals showed up at the house, but did they have the right house? still no reason to harm a child. seems as if they wanted someone to suffer,
Let all the gun control freaks blindly say we need more gun control. I'm willing to bet the shooter didn't obtain a gun legally and would continue to get guns even if Chicago banned guns. I also agree with the poster that the same liberals that cry gun control also cry that the criminals don't need to be punished to long.
gun control, gun control....no! How about gang control, gang control, gang control! It's the gang bangers that are causing the mayhem on the streets of Chicago. Go after the hard core gang-bangers.
My deepest heartfelt concern goes out to the parents of the slaughtered child..first and foremost.
With that said, the years of simply, Throughout history, the poor lower class neighborhoods have always allowed an above nominal amount of chaos...this culminates in deaths of extreme youths, such as this and other violence that under normal circumstances should not happen. You cant change the focus of a fool very easily, but you can sew the seeds of a better life. teach our children to value life, through respect of persons and true consequences to bad choices. We need more fathers to be fathers in the poor communities still.
statistics:
Compared to boys from intact, two-parent families, teenage boys from disrupted families are not only more likely to be incarcerated for delinquent offenses, but also to manifest worse conduct while incarcerated.
Source: M Eileen Matlock et al., "Family Correlates of Social Skills..." Adolescence 29. 1994.
We've been pitching this message for the past 25+ years...slowly men are starting to step up and take on the greatest challenge in life...raising children.
I wish that firearms were banned. Period. And that ammunition and weapons factories closed and were illegal. Having guns readily available certainly DOES make shootings far more common. I find it incredibly freaky that people would want those pieces of metallic violence anywhere near them. Cowards. But the point is the innocent little girl. Her life was stolen and her cousin will have that memory with her for the rest of her life. My love goes out to her family and classmates. May the savage souls of the perpetrators rot in hell and never feel love again.
This has nothing to do with guns or their regulation. This is all about a bunch of animals preying on each other. Why is it that this type of thing continually happens in black areas of large cities??? Maybe it is about race???
Think about it people guns are not the problem here, the problem is our sick and distorted society that allows for children to fathom the idea of taking a gun and pointing it at someone and pulling the trigger. Seriously when you were 8-13 years old did the thought ever cross your mind to go out and kill someone. When I was 12 I had a bike and I knew where my fathers guns were and I never once would have thought to take one and go out and kill someone, especially another child. Whoever these antisocial psycophathic kids are I hope they burn in hell or it's equivalent because that is what they deserve and to their parents, hey nice job there raising a couple animals and leaving them loose on our streets. We the entire human race have to stop allowing our children to run thier own lives and take some responsibility in teaching them right from wrong, and when they don't listen and go down this path send them to prison so at least innocent people don't get hurt. God bless the soul of the little girl and her family.