1 dead, 1 hurt Thursday morning in surging Chicago expressway gun violence

By DON BABWIN | Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — Two shootings on a Chicago expressway early Thursday left one person dead and another wounded, the latest incidents in a dramatic surge of gun violence on the city’s major roads.

According to the Illinois State Police, both shootings occurred in the northbound lanes of Interstate 55 within three hours. In the first incident, a person traveling on the interstate near Lake Shore Drive at 3:16 a.m. suffered what the state police called non-life threatening injuries.

At 5:39 a.m., another person was shot near the ramp to Interstate 94. The person was pronounced dead a short time later at a hospital, the police said in a news release.

No arrests have been made in either shooting and the state police have not provided any details about either victim.

The incidents bring the total number of expressway shootings thus far this year in the Chicago area to 213 — more than double the 101 expressway shootings that the state police investigated during the same period in 2020.

About six weeks ago, the state police announced that it was increasing the number of troopers on expressways.^[1] At that time, the agency said at least 85 people were wounded in the shootings and 16 had been killed.

As of Nov. 14, the Chicago Police Department — whose figures do not include expressway shootings — had responded to 3,157 shooting incidents, which is nearly 300 more than occurred by the same date in 2020. At the same time, the number of homicides has increased in the city from 696 as of Nov. 14, 2020, to 715 by the same date this year. The vast majority of those victims were fatally shot, but the department has not specified how many.

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