Chicago Went 6 Days Without A Fatal Shooting For The First Time In Over 4 Years

By Stephen Gossett in News on Mar 6, 2017 3:51PM

Getty Images / Photo: Brad Thompson

For the first time in more than four years, Chicago went six days without a shooting fatality, according to the Sun-Times.

The stretch of time last week without a fatal shooting was the first time since January 2013; and Chicago has only once went more than four days without a deadly shooting between then and the recent six-day stretch—in December of last year, the paper reports.

According to Chicago police, the most recent shooting fatality in Chicago happened on Saturday, March 4, in Austin. At around 12:13 p.m. officers responded to a call of a person down in 5400 block of West Ohio Street and found a man facedown in a vacant lot. The victim, 32, had been shot several times in the lower body. He was pronounced dead on the scene, police said.

Ninety-six people have been fatally shot so far in Chicago this year, according to the Sun-Times. A study of last year's spike in gun violence by the University of Chicago's Crime Lab found that there was no simple explanation for the city's violence, although increased deadliness of guns was one of many possible factors. Some Chicago-based criminologists have highlighted disinvestment in certain poverty-stricken neighborhoods as key contributing factors to the gun violence.