JERUSALEM — Hundreds of Israeli ultranationalists, some chanting “Death to Arabs,” paraded through east Jerusalem on Tuesday in a show of force that threatened to spark renewed violence just weeks after a war with Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. Palestinians in Gaza responded by launching incendiary balloons that caused at least 10 fires in southern Israel.

The march posed a test for Israel’s fragile new government as well as the tenuous truce that ended last month’s 11-day war between Israel and Hamas.

Palestinians consider the march, meant to celebrate Israel’s capture of east Jerusalem in 1967, to be a provocation. Hamas called on Palestinians to “resist” the parade, a version of which helped ignite last month’s 11-day Gaza war.

With music blaring, hundreds of Jewish nationalists gathered and moved in front of Damascus Gate. Most appeared to be young men, and many held blue-and-white Israeli flags as they danced and sang religious songs.

At one point, several dozen youths, jumping and waving their hands in their air, chanted: “Death to Arabs!” In another anti-Arab chant, they yelled: “May your village burn.”

The crowd, while boisterous, appeared to be much smaller than during last month’s parade.

Ahead of the march, Israeli police cleared the area in front of Damascus Gate, shut down roads to traffic, ordered shops to close and sent away young Palestinian protesters. Palestinians said six people were arrested, and at five people were hurt in clashes with police.

The parade provided an early challenge for Israel’s new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, a hardline Israeli nationalist who has promised a pragmatic approach as he presides over a delicate, diverse coalition government.

Though there were concerns the march would raise tensions, canceling it would have opened Bennett and other right-wing members of the coalition to intense criticism from those who would view it as a capitulation to Hamas. The coalition was sworn in on Sunday and includes parties from across the political spectrum, including a small Arab party.

Mansour Abbas, whose Raam party is the first Arab faction to join an Israeli coalition, said the march was “an attempt to set the region on fire for political aims,” with the intention of undermining the new government.

Abbas said the police and public security minister should have canceled the event. “I call on all sides not to be dragged into an escalation and maintain maximum restraint,” he said.

In past years, the march passed through Damascus Gate and into the heart of the Muslim Quarter, a crowded Palestinian neighborhood with narrow streets and alleys. But police changed the route Tuesday to avoid the Muslim Quarter.

Instead, marchers were to walk around the ancient walls of the Old City and enter through Jaffa Gate, a main thoroughfare for tourists, and head toward the Jewish Quarter and Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray.

Damascus Gate is a focal point of Palestinian life in east Jerusalem. Palestinian protesters repeatedly clashed with Israeli police over restrictions on public gatherings during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in April and May.

Those clashes eventually spread to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a flashpoint site sacred to Jews and Muslims. Tensions at the time were further fueled by protests over the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinian families by Jewish settlers, also in Jerusalem.

At the height of those tensions, on May 10, Israeli ultranationalists held their annual flag parade. While it was diverted from the Damascus Gate at the last minute, it was seen by Palestinians as an unwelcome celebration of Israeli control over what they view as their capital.

In the name of defending the holy city, Hamas fired long-range rockets at Jerusalem, disrupting the march and sparking the Gaza war, which claimed more than 250 Palestinian lives and killed 13 people in Israel.

After capturing east Jerusalem in 1967, Israel annexed the in a move not recognized by most of the international community. It considers the entire city its capital, while the Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state. The competing claims over east Jerusalem, home to sensitive Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites, lie at the heart of the conflict and have sparked many rounds of violence.

Ahead of the march, Hamas called on Palestinians to show “valiant resistance” to the march. It urged people to gather in the Old City and at the Al-Aqsa Mosque to “rise up in the face of the occupier and resist it by all means to stop its crimes and arrogance.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Hamas-linked Palestinians launched a number of incendiary balloons from Gaza, setting off at least 10 blazes in southern Israel, according to Israel’s national fire department.

Abu Malek, one of the young men launching the balloons, said called the move “an initial response” to the march.

Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh, of the internationally backed Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, called the march an “aggression against our people.”

Israeli media reported the military was on heightened alert in the occupied West Bank and along the Gaza frontier in case of violence. Batteries of Israel’s Iron Dome rocket-defense system were seen deployed near the southern town of Netivot, near the Gaza border, as a precaution. Hundreds of police will also be deployed.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz met with the military chief of staff, the police commissioner and other senior security officials on Tuesday. He “underscored the need to avoid friction and protect the personal safety of … Jews and Arabs alike.”

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said U.N. officials have urged all sides to avoid “provocations” in order to solidify the informal cease-fire that halted the Gaza war.

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Associated Press writer Joseph Krauss contributed

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NEW YORK — The tragedies of Brian Wilson’s life is a rock ‘n’ roll story well told.

The postscript — that he’s a survivor nearing age 80 who appears to be supported personally and professionally in a way he never really had before — is less familiar.

Despite some uncomfortable moments in “Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road,” that important update is the point of the documentary that premieres Tuesday at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York.

The film’s heart is a series of drives around southern California, where Wilson and Rolling Stone magazine editor Jason Fine talk, listen to music and occasionally stop at restaurants. There’s a comfort level between the two; Fine is a journalist who has become a friend.

Wilson, the creative force behind the Beach Boys, has dealt with an abusive, hard-driving father, the mental illness Schizoaffective disorder where he’d hear voices berating and belittling him, and band members often resistant to where he was going musically. Add in years of drug abuse, a quack psychologist who effectively held him prisoner for a decade and the younger brothers who died early, and it’s a lot to endure.

“He doesn’t deserve the accolades about his music,” Elton John says in the film. “He deserves the accolades about his personal life.”

John, along with Bruce Springsteen, Don Was and Linda Perry, are eloquent in describing what made Wilson’s work unique and enduring, crucial to making the film appeal to more than just his fans.

Film director Brent Wilson (no relation) contacted Fine after his own attempts to interview Wilson bore little fruit. Fine said his own experiences with the musician have taught him that “being there when he’s ready to talk has always been a big thing with Brian.”

So they hit the road, eventually filming some 70 hours.

Wilson’s importance to southern California is evident at some of the stops along their drive. A sign now marks the spot where a Beach Boys album cover was shot. While the boyhood home of Brian, Dennis and Carl Wilson in Hawthorne no longer stands, a plaque marks that location, too.

“I didn’t feel that Brian’s story, Brian’s third act now, had been done properly,” Fine said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I think that Brian is often seen as a recluse, as a victim, as someone who burned out (and)… lost his way,” he said. “That’s not how I see Brian at all. Ever since I’ve known him I see him as a hero, a courageous person, who gives everybody who goes to his shows strength and inspiration.”

File Photo

Fine said that “I wanted to show people Brian’s humanity, his decency, his kindness, his humor, his curiosity.”

In the film, Fine stops the car outside of the former home of Wilson’s brother Carl, who died of lung cancer at 51 in 1998. Fine gets out; Wilson wants to stay in the passenger seat. The camera catches Wilson wiping away a tear.

At another point, as they passed a spot where he once owned a health food store, Wilson says that “I haven’t had a friend to talk to in three years.”

They are moments that are deeply discomforting, bordering on exploitive. Wilson is clearly a damaged soul and, for his sake, you wonder at times in “Long Promised Road” if he would have been been better served by the dignity of privacy.

Fine doesn’t see it that way.

“All of it is done on Brian’s terms and on Brian’s comfort level, so I don’t see it as exploitive,” he said.

Wilson himself, in a Zoom call with reporters, said little. Asked why he agreed to participate in the film, he said, “I don’t know. I just made up my mind.”

Fine said it appears that the level of fandom that Wilson inspires is sometimes intimidating. He was struck once, following a show where Wilson and his band performed the “Pet Sounds” album, when Wilson told him that he’d always doubted it, but that now he thought that people loved his music and that he was doing what he was supposed to be doing.

“You’d think that was something he would felt over the last 60 years or so, being onstage with people singing and screaming for his music,” he said. “But what you feel inside is different than what comes from the external sources. I think that he feels the love and I think that’s huge.”

After all the years where his life was dominated by negativity, Wilson now has a positive, supportive personal life with wife Melinda and their family. He’s also surrounded by musicians who clearly revere him and are devoted to bringing what Elton John called the orchestra in Wilson’s head to life.

Nerves drove Wilson off the concert circuit at the height of the Beach Boys’ success. Now he loves performing, Fine said.

Perhaps, within himself, Wilson has accepted that he’s done things that mean so much to others, he said.

“That sort of simple message he really wanted to give people through his music going back to the ’60s — a sense of warmth, a sense that it’s going be OK in the same way that music lifted him up from his darkness, he’d try to do for other people,” he said. “I think now, more than earlier in his career, he accepts that he does that and that’s a great comfort to him.”

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At its core, baseball is a game of numbers, typified by the familiar phrase: “You are what the back of your baseball card says you are.”

For the better part of three decades, Black baseball players competed on identical fields under the same rules as their white counterparts, but were considered inferior — even if their style of play and level of competition said otherwise.

Last December, Major League Baseball took a giant step toward correcting that by officially elevating the Negro Leagues to major league status.

The transformation takes another step forward Tuesday with Negro League statistics now listed alongside those of the American League and National League on Baseball-Reference.com.

“This is an opportunity for America to learn about some of the greatest ballplayers who’ve ever played the game. They just happened to be of a darker complexion,” says Larry Lester, co-founder of Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.

While the website has displayed the statistics of Negro League players for at least a decade, the most visible changes can be seen among the official single-season and career record leaderboards — with great Negro Leaguers such as Josh Gibson (who hit .466 in 1943) and Satchel Paige (who had a 0.72 ERA in 1944) featured prominently.

With assistance from the Society for American Baseball Research, Seamheads.com and the families of the former Negro League players, the project has now become a reality — even if it’s far from complete.

“Much remains to be done,” says Sports Reference president Sean Forman. “Statistics on our site will change as new information is discovered.”

With charismatic players and an exciting style of play, Negro Leagues history has long been celebrated in baseball lore. But the actual statistics have been hard to track down.

“For many years, we’ve heard those great stories. Some of it’s folklore and some of it’s embellished truth. Those truths have long been a staple of Negro League stats and narrative,” Lester says. “While these stories can be entertaining, now a dialogue can include quantified and qualified stats to support the authentic greatness of these great athletes like Josh Gibson.

“The beauty of the stats is that they now humanize these folk heroes. These stats legitimize their accomplishments.”

However, numbers can’t tell the whole story. For starters, the Negro Leagues played far fewer games in a season than the major leagues did. But by using stats that adjust for league averages and ballparks, it’s easier to compare players from different eras.

For example, the career OPS+ (adjusted on-base plus slugging percentage) leaderboard looks like this:

1. Babe Ruth 206

2. Ted Williams 191

3. Oscar Charleston 184

4. Barry Bonds 182

5. Lou Gehrig 179

Yes, that’s Negro Leagues star Charleston (1920-41) behind only the Sultan of Swat and the Splendid Splinter. Fellow Negro Leaguers Turkey Stearnes (177) and Mule Suttles (172) also rank among the top 10.

Lester says there’s even more information about the great Negro Leaguers just waiting to be verified by official records.

“I am so frustrated that we have not been able to find a box score in 1938 when Josh Gibson hit four home runs,” Lester says. “We have three newspaper accounts of him hitting four home runs in Zanesville, Ohio, but those four home runs are not included in the final stats because we had to have a full box score so that the data can be balanced.”

That’s partly why Gibson won’t be found on the career home run list. His official total of 165 is far fewer than the “almost 800 home runs” that’s listed on his Hall of Fame plaque. But his rate of one homer every 13 at-bats compares favorably with legendary sluggers Ruth and Bonds.

And that’s the point.

“There were several conversations I used to always have about black and white. It was like Josh Gibson was one of the greatest Black baseball players,” Gibson’s great-grandson Sean Gibson says. “Now we can say Josh Gibson is considered one of the greatest baseball players of all time.”

Read more at usatoday.com

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Tom Schuba wrote a nice news report in Tuesday’s paper about legal and illegal weed, but it did not address one very large and real consideration. When legal weed is purchased and taxes are paid, customers know what they are getting — and they can depend on getting the same product, along with dependable advice about the product, the next time they go back to the store.

But when weed is purchased illegally from, in Schuba’s description, a “dealer operating in Chicago,” there are at least two nefarious issues:

SEND LETTERS TO: [email protected]. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes. Letters should be approximately 350 words or less.

1) There is no quality control for the “dork” (the dealer’s word) who is getting ripped off price-wise.

2) And how many times has a dealer told a customer that he’s out of weed, but just happens to have some really nice cocaine, available at an amazing discount for first-timers. Several months later, that cocaine supply might “dry up,” but then the dealer would “just happen” to have some nice heroin.

The illegal trade is in this for the immediate return, while legal dispensers of cannabis are looking to build a list of long-term customers. It is a distinction that deserves some consideration.

Gerald King, Merrionette Park

Dangers of nuclear energy

As Illinois legislators get ready to vote on an energy bill this week, which includes another huge bailout for Exelon’s nuclear power plants, I see that a nuclear accident with a release of radiation appears to be unfolding in China, that the 35-year-old Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine is presenting renewed concerns about the melted fuel’s potential to react and create another form of disaster, and that Japan is preparing to dump radioactive water into the ocean from the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

To top it off, we in Illinois are all watching the plume from a chemical plant fire work its way south from Rockton to Rockford. The evacuations and concerns people have about being exposed to the plume of burnt chemicals pales in comparison to what a nuclear accident would look like in Illinois. The plume from a nuclear accident is invisible and leaves behind a permanent evacuation zone.

But even with all this, legislators and others cross their fingers and hope that such accidents won’t happen in Illinois with old nuclear power plants. What could possible go wrong?

Gail Snyder, Homer Glen

Get rid of the Drive

After the 1987 earthquake, San Franciscans woke up and realized that the expressway they had built in earlier “car is king” days, the Embarcadero, was a big mistake. There was no reason to have an expressway separating their beautiful city from their beautiful bay.

So too Chicago. One day, hopefully soon, we will cancel the expressway, Lake Shore Drive, that separates us from our lakefront. We will replace it with “fun” public transportation that can move great masses of people from one world-class attraction to the next. They will ride shoulder-to-shoulder with daily commuters. There will be east/west feeders that bring folks to the lakefront from every neighborhood.

We will create the world’s greatest bike path (“bike the drive” every day) and create more green space. We will build a great public plaza that stretches for miles and attracts visitors from all corners of the globe.

And when we do all this, I will be delighted if we decide to call it the DuSable.

But — and here is my fear — renaming the existing Lake Shore Drive for Jean Baptiste Point DuSable could make it that much harder to reimagine, repurpose and replace the Drive. The folks leading the renaming campaign should “make no little plans” and work toward presenting a “DuSable of the future” that stirs the imagination for the next 100 years.

Carmen D. Caruso, the Loop

Manchin reflects West Virginia

I read Jesse Jackson’s Tuesday column about Sen. Joe Manchin with great amusement. Jackson claims Manchin is “under immense pressure” from the Koch Brothers and other right wing groups to stand up against the Biden administration.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Manchin is beholden to only one group — the voters of West Virginia. The state is generally conservative, but voters there keep re-electing the Democratic senator precisely because they believe he thinks in a bipartisan and fair way.

Tony LaMantia, Logan Square

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NEW YORK — “Gone Girl” actor Lisa Banes died 10 days after being injured by a hit-and-run driver in New York City, police said.

The 65-year-old Banes, who was struck by a scooter or motorcycle while crossing a street on June 4, died Monday at Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital, a police department spokesperson said. The driver did not stop, police said.

Banes appeared in numerous television shows and movies, including “Gone Girl” in 2014 and “Cocktail” with Tom Cruise in 1988. On television, she had roles on “Nashville,” “Madam Secretary,” “Masters of Sex” and “NCIS.”

She acted on stage regularly, including Broadway appearances in the Neil Simon play “Rumors” in 1988, in the musical “High Society” in 1998 and in the Noel Coward play “Present Laughter” in 2010.

Her manager, David Williams, said Banes was hit as she was crossing Amsterdam Avenue on the way to visit the Juilliard School, her alma mater.

Banes lived in Los Angeles and was married to Kathryn Kranhold, a contributing reporter for the Center for Public Integrity.

Friends and colleagues mourned Banes on Tuesday on Twitter.

“Just busted,” singer Jill Sobule tweeted. “Lisa Banes was magnificent, hilarious, and big-hearted – always helped me though the hard times. She was so beloved by so many.”

Actor Seth McFarlane said he was deeply saddened at the death of Banes, whom he worked with on his TV series “The Orville.”

“Her stage presence, magnetism, skill and talent were matched only by her unwavering kindness and graciousness toward all of us,” McFarlane tweeted.

Police have made no arrests.

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NEW YORK — Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Tuesday that 70% of adults in New York have received at least one dose of a coronavirus vaccine, a threshold he said the state would celebrate by easing many of its remaining social distancing rules and shooting off fireworks.

“What does 70% mean? It means that we can now return to life as we know it,” Cuomo told an invitation-only crowd at the World Trade Center in Manhattan.

Effective immediately, he said, the state is lifting rules that had limited the size of gatherings and required some types of businesses to follow cleaning protocols or take people’s temperatures or screen them for recent COVID-19 symptoms.

Businesses will no longer have to follow social distancing rules, or limit how many people they can allow inside based on keeping people 6 feet (2 meters) apart.

Some rules will remain: New Yorkers, for now, will continue to have to wear masks in schools, subways, large venues, homeless shelters, hospitals, nursing homes, jails and prisons.

Cuomo, a Democrat, said there would be fireworks displays around the state to celebrate.

It’s unclear how many more people have to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity, which is when enough people have immunity that the virus has trouble spreading.

It’s unclear what that threshold is for the coronavirus, though many experts say it’s 70% or higher. Just half of all 20 million residents in New York are fully vaccinated, according to federal data as of Monday.

Over the past seven days, New York has been averaging around 450 new coronavirus cases a day, the lowest level since the pandemic began.

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June 19 marks Juneteenth, the true day of liberation in 1865 for the remaining enslaved African Americans, who were notified of their freedom on that date in Galveston, Texas.

Here are some Juneteenth celebrations planned in Chicago and beyond:

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, 212 N. Sixth St., Springfield: A rare copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Lincoln is on display through July 6. Admission: adults $15, kids 5-15 $6; presidentlincoln.illinois.gov.

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A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum, 10406 S. Maryland and 1900 W. Jackson: The ninth annual Juneteenth celebration kicks off at Malcolm X College. The Friday slate includes a caravan parade route outlining the Great Migration trail to the Pullman Porter Museum and a panel discussion. The Saturday slate, which takes place at the museum, includes music and vendors. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday; 2-9 p.m. Saturday. The event is free; facebook.com/events.

Juneteenth Jazz Celebration, New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, 4301 W. Washington Blvd., 2 p.m. June 19: honoring historian and educator Haki R. Madhubuti with a performance by Isaiah Collier & The Chosen Few. Free; register for tickets at eventbrite.com.

Beverly/Morgan Park Juneteenth family festival and Black business crawl, 11000 S. Longwood Dr. and 2407 W. 111th St. (Beverly Arts Center): The event includes storytelling, art, drumming circles, food, and activities for kids, along with featured promotion of Black-owned businesses, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and noon to 3 p.m (BAC location), June 19. The event is free; facebook.com/events.

CMPI Juneteenth Celebration, online: The Chicago Musical Pathways Initiative will host a virtual celebration of diversity in classical music coinciding with Juneteenth. The slate of performers will include composer Xavier Foley and bassist Joseph Conyers, 6:45 p.m. June 19. The event is free; app.mobilecause.com.

Eden Place Nature Center, 4417 S. Stewart: The Fuller Park venue will host a Father’s Day Juneteenth celebration, The picnic outing includes storytelling, and music from the 64th Street Drummers and the Nancy Green Team Performers, 1-3 p.m. June 20. The event is free; edenplacenaturecenter.org

Evanston’s Juneteenth Parade, 1801 Main, Evanston: This year’s parade, which has the theme “A journey towards real reparations,” kicks off at the Robert Crown Center and proceeds north on Dodge Avenue to Simpson Street, east on Simpson Street to the Morton Civic Center. 11 a.m. June 19. The event is free; cityofevanston.org.

‘Fred!,’ online: The SPAA (Speakers Publishers & Authors Association) Theater & Performing Arts Center will host “Fred!” a virtual musical celebrating the life and times of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, 7 p.m. June 19. $10 cover charge; eventbrite.com.

The Garfield Park 1865 Fest Coalition, 100 N. Central Park: The Garfield Park 1865 Fest Coalition will host a three-day festival celebrating Juneteenth while honoring Black military veterans and those currently serving. The slate of events includes Saturday cultural workshops and a Sunday live gospel concert. Garfield Park Fieldhouse, Friday 2-5 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday, Music circle, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. June 18-20. The event is free. Registration for the military honors are available via Eventbrite.

Girl Scouts of Greater Chicago Area and Northwest Indiana, Walgreens, 3405 S. King Dr.: The scouts are hosting a Chicago Neighborhood Walk in Bronzeville. The event will include a walk along the Bronzeville Hall of Fame along with food and snacks. 10 a.m. to noon. June 19. $2 cover charge. Internet registration ends June 16; activecommunities.com.

Harold Washington Cultural Center, 2701 S. Martin Luther King Dr.: The center partners with M.A.D.D. Rhythms and Bronzeville businesses for an in-person Juneteenth celebration including dance, DJ and live music, food, workshops, raffles, art and children’s activities. 1 p.m. June 19. Admission is free. Visit maddrhythms.com.

Jerk 48, 611 E. 67th: The jerk eats restaurant is hosting a block party with free food, a bounce house, giveaways and games, along with music provided by Chosen Few DJs member Wayne Williams. 2-5 p.m. June 19. The event is free; instagram.com/jerk_48.

Juneteenth BBQ & Ride, Ellis Park, 3520 S. Cottage Grove: Streets Calling Bike Club is hosting a Juneteenth celebration by kicking off the festivities with bike ride that ends at Mandrake Park, 3858 S. Cottage Grove, where a march, a barbecue, music, food, and games will take place. 11:30 a.m. June 19. The event is free; instagram.com/p/CQI8wPGtx4L.

Juneteenth yoga class, 1618 E. 53rd: A Black-owned studio, YogaSix, is offering a Juneteenth yoga class. All proceeds will go to a social justice nonprofit or the DuSable Museum of African American History, 10 a.m. June 20. Suggested $10 donation; yogasix.com.

Suzanne Harris

Old Town School of Folk Music, online: The school presents a free stream of “Freedom Songs Juneteenth Celebration” featuring the Original Chicago Blues All Stars Revue, which includes members of blues great Willie Dixon’s band. The evening begins with singer-poet Ugochi and the Afro Soul Ensemble. Livestreams at 8 p.m. June 19. The event is free; oldtownschool.org.

South Shore Brew Coffee + Pride Juneteenth 2021, 7101 S. Yates: The South Shore-based coffee shop will provide merchandise, music via DJs, a special menu, and pop-up shopping options. 8:00 a.m. to 3 p.m. June 19. The event is free; instagram.com/southshorebrewchicago/.

Chicago Red Stars’ Juneteenth game, Seat Geek Stadium, 7000 S. Harlem, Bridgeview: Chicago’s NWSL team is hosting a pregame expo ahead of their game vs. Washington Spirit. The event — highlighting Black-owned businesses and nonprofits — is in conjunction with local organizations My Block, My Hood, My City; Chicago Votes; and Black Fires, a Chicago soccer supporters’ group. 7 p.m. June 19; Tickets starts at $20; chicagoredstars.com/juneteenth.

The Woodlawn, 1200 E. 79th: The Chatham eatery and event space will host a Juneteenth Block Party featuring guest DJs, spoken word poetry, comedy, and light refreshments, Noon-10 p.m. June 19. The event is free; thewoodlawn1200.com.

Contributing: Mary Houlihan

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Three women and a man were shot and killed, and four other people were seriously wounded, when an argument broke out inside a home in Englewood on the South Side early Tuesday, according to Chicago police.

The four were pronounced dead shortly before 6 a.m. at the scene, a two-story house with a gray stone front in the 6200 block of South Morgan Street.

Chicago police spokesman Tom Ahern initially said all four were women, but he was corrected by Police Supt. David Brown at a news conference.

Four other people were taken to hospitals, at least two of them in critical condition:

• A woman was taken in critical condition to the University of Chicago Hospital.
• A 23-year-old man went to St. Bernard Hospital with a gunshot wound to the back. He was taken to University of Chicago Hospital also in critical condition.
• A 41-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to the back of the head was taken to Christ Hospital.
• A 25-year-old man suffered a gunshot wound to the back of the head. He was also taken to Christ.
• A 2-year-old girl was taken from the home and brought to Comer Children’s Hospital for observation but did not appear injured, police said.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

A witness told police there were two volleys of gunshots inside the home, hours apart.

The first was around 2 a.m., when Brown said the ShotSpotter system alerted police to gunfire near the Morgan address. Brown did not say if police responded to the alert.

The witness heard shots again around 5 a.m., around the time officers arrived to find the eight victims. Police found shell casings inside the house and a large-capacity “drum magazine.”

There was no sign of forced entry, Brown said. At least one of the victims likely lived at the address, but Brown did not elaborate on the relationships of the victims and the shooter.

Brown said the victims taken to hospitals had not yet been interviewed by detectives, and the investigation still was “very preliminary.”

“All we know about this residence is there’s been several calls there for disturbances,” Brown told reporters. “Overall, the block where this residence is located is fairly quiet, not much activity going on that requires a police response.

“I can reassure the public that there will be an increased police presence in the area until we’re able to identify offenders, if possible, or what, exactly, happened inside,” he said.

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As officers continued working the scene into the morning, the family of one of the victims who died, Denice Mathis, approached the cordoned off section of South Morgan. Some sobbed. Others cursed at the tragedy of what happened.

The family said Mathis, in her early 30s, was a devoted mother of four sons and a daughter. On Monday, she’d been up at Six Flags with her boys.

“She was a good person — a free-spirited person,” said a cousin, Vickie Smith. “She loved her family.”

Mathis lived on the South Side, but the family didn’t know what brought her to the gathering on South Morgan.

A man who said he was Mathis’ brother said his sister had been to the house many times before. The place was home to a barber, and a lot of people went there to get their hair cut.

“She was a good girl — none of these knuckleheads,” the brother said.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

Earlier Tuesday, a woman sobbing hysterically ran under the police tape blocking the entrance to South Morgan at West 63rd. She was quickly surrounded by police and guided back behind the tape.

A few moments later, she cried: “They killed my daughter. That’s my baby. That’s my baby.”

It wasn’t until around 12:45 p.m. — seven hours after they were discovered — that the bodies were removed from the house and taken to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in little over a week, and came just hours after gunfire erupted at a party in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the South Side, killing a man and wounding two women wounded.

Early Saturday, a woman was killed and nine others wounded near 75th Street and South Prairie Avenue. Kimfier Miles, 29, a mother of three, was out with a group of girlfriends when two men opened fire about 2 a.m. Saturday.

Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times

The weekend before, six men and two women were wounded when someone in a silver car opened fire in a shooting in the 8900 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue in the Burnside neighborhood.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Chicago is part of a “club of cities to which no one wants to belong: Cities with mass shootings.”

It’s a club that will keep on growing until Congress summons the “political will” to stop the never-ending flow of illegal guns from states like Indiana onto the streets of Chicago, she said at an unrelated news conference Tuesday morning.

“When gun [laws] are so porous that they can come across our borders with such ease, as we see every single day in Chicago, we know that we have to have a multi-jurisdictional, national solution to this horrible plague of gun violence,” she said. “And that starts with eliminating opportunity for criminals, for children to get access to illegal guns so that petty disputes turn into mass shooting events, as we’ve seen over and over and over again–not just this year, but every year.”

Lightfoot bristled when asked how the steady stream of mass shootings might impact her efforts to reopen the city and encourage Chicagoans to come downtown to dine and shop and patronize the stores and restaurants in their own neighborhoods.

She noted that the latest mass shooting, in Englewood, happened “inside a single residence” — not out on the street or in a large outdoor gathering.

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“The reality is, our city is safe,” the mayor said. “And I stand by that. We have done yeoman’s work over the course of a very difficult year where every major city–New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Atlanta and on and on the list goes–has seen similar surge in violence.”

She was pressed about the perception of safety, and the impact that Chicago’s latest mass shooting will have.

“What I’m concerned about is the fact that people lost their lives this morning. I’m concerned about the fact that there are people who are dead in an act of violence that makes no sense to me,” she said. “I’m concerned about the families who will be forever scarred by the loss of their loved ones … That’s what my primary focus is as the mayor of this city.

“Obviously, perception matters. But, what matters most is the people who, right now, are the in the hospital fighting for their lives and the family members who are fearful of what was gonna happen,” she said. “And the people who are now claiming the bodies of their loved ones at coroner’s [office]. That’s what I’m most focused and concerned on.”

Asked whether she believes Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx is doing a good job prosecuting gun offenders, Lightfoot pointed to what one of the state’s attorney’s top aides said about the Chicago Police Department during a recent webinar for reporters.

“The conclusion of her policy person was that the Chicago Police Department is arresting the wrong people who possess guns. I fundamentally disagree with that,” she said. “We are a city that’s awash in illegal guns. Those illegal guns cause deep pain and injury and death.”

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The Quark In The Road

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Uncle Joe has tea with Good Queen Bess II: a short verse

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By Aquinas wired,
today at 12:40 pm

Joe Biden joined the Queen for tea

He was as gracious as can be.

He minded all the p’s and q’s

And then politely shared his views.

“Generous” was the Queen, he said.

And all went well, from A to Zed.

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  Aquinas wired

  I’m Jerry Partacz, happily married to my wife Julie for over 40 years. I have four children and eleven grandchildren. I’m enjoying retirement after 38 years of teaching. I now have an opportunity to share my thoughts on many things. I’m an incurable optimist. I also love to solve crossword puzzles and to write light verse. I love to read, to garden, to play the piano, to collect stamps and coins, and to watch “Curb Your Enthusiasm”.

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Details of the pre-dawn encounter in December — most of which come from a lawyer representing Johnny Lorenzo Bolton’s family — resemble a case that is well known nationwide: the killing nine months earlier of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.

ATLANTA — Johnny Lorenzo Bolton was lying with his eyes closed on a couch in his apartment near Atlanta when police serving a narcotics search warrant burst through the front door with guns drawn and no warning.

Bolton stood up and at least one of the officers fired, sending two bullets into Bolton’s chest. The 49-year-old Black man died from his injuries.

Details of the pre-dawn encounter in December — most of which come from a lawyer representing Bolton’s family — resemble a case that is well known nationwide: the killing nine months earlier of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. The 26-year-old Black woman also died after being shot by officers serving a drug search warrant at her apartment.

But unlike Taylor’s, Bolton’s name is not painted in large letters on protest signs or mentioned in the ongoing nationwide discussions on racial injustice and police brutality that began after Taylor’s death in March 2020 and that of George Floyd, who died under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020.

Bolton’s relatives and their lawyers wanted to try to get information about the shooting from law enforcement before drawing attention to his killing, they said. Frustrated in those efforts, the attorneys sent a draft of a lawsuit to Cobb County officials in mid-April along with a letter threatening litigation if county officials didn’t provide more information and address accountability and compensation for Bolton’s death.

“For almost six months, we gave them quiet,” Bolton’s sister Daphne Bolton said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “That lets me know that’s not what gets a response.”

Now, Bolton says, “I want my brother’s name to ring beside Breonna Taylor’s. When they say Breonna Taylor, I want them to say Breonna Taylor and Johnny Lorenzo Bolton. I want them to be simultaneous.”

The specifics of Taylor’s killing have been laid out in detail: Police arrived after midnight and used a battering ram to knock open the door. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, said he grabbed his gun and he and Taylor got out of bed and walked toward the door. Police say they knocked and identified themselves. Walker said he didn’t hear them say police and feared the officers were intruders. He fired once, hitting an officer in the leg. Three officers returned fire, discharging a total of 32 bullets, five of which hit Taylor.

Far fewer details about Bolton’s death have been released.

In a bare-bones news release issued the day he died, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, or GBI, which investigates shootings involving police at the request of local agencies, said officers had executed a narcotics search warrant at a Smyrna apartment around 4:40 a.m. on Dec. 17.

“During entry into the residence, a SWAT team member discharged his firearm and an occupant of the apartment was struck,” the release said.

It was a Cobb County Sheriff’s Office SWAT team. The agency has said it’s cooperating with the investigation.

The GBI said it turned over its investigative file to the Cobb County district attorney’s office on March 16.

The district attorney’s office has said it’s still investigating and — as it does with all cases involving shootings by police — plans to present the case to a grand jury.

In a letter responding to the family’s lawyers, an attorney representing Cobb County said officials were reviewing the claims raised by the family’s lawyers but they “believe there are several material inaccuracies” in the draft lawsuit and accompanying letter. County officials have declined requests from the AP for documents detailing the shooting, citing an exemption in the state’s open records law for material related to an ongoing investigation.

The two-bedroom apartment where Bolton lived served as an unofficial boarding house, according to Zack Greenamyre, one of the family’s lawyers. A woman and her teenage daughter lived in one bedroom, another woman rented the other bedroom, and Bolton slept on a couch in the living room, Greenamyre said.

As part of an investigation targeting a suspected drug dealer, police served two warrants at roughly the same time: one at a townhouse where the suspected dealer lived and the second at the apartment where Bolton lived, which police said was paid for by the alleged dealer. The officer who provided sworn statements for both warrant applications said they were based on information from a confidential law enforcement source and surveillance. The officer said the confidential informant bought cocaine at the apartment in September and that drug sales continued there in December.

The officer asked for a “no-knock” warrant, which allows police to enter without announcing themselves. He cited the criminal histories of people who were known to associate with the suspected dealer at the apartment and previous reports of guns seen there.

Greenamyre says the warrant for the apartment was based on false and outdated information and that the apartment was purely residential, with no drug sales taking place there. Bolton’s name doesn’t appear in the paperwork for either warrant.

Greenamyre said witnesses told him Bolton was lying on a couch with his eyes closed, possibly sleeping, when officers crashed through the door. He stood in response to the noise and was shot by police, the witnesses said. They also said that as Bolton lay dying, officers didn’t immediately provide first aid but instead handcuffed him.

“The limited information available to the family now does not make this look like a justified shooting,” said the letter accompanying the draft lawsuit.

About two weeks after the shooting, police got additional arrest warrants for the alleged dealer, who had already been arrested in the raid on the townhouse, and his brother, saying the pair had access to a locked closet in the apartment where a backpack containing drugs was found.

Police also got arrest warrants for two women and a man who were in the apartment with Bolton when police entered. The warrants charge all three with possession of a gun despite prior felony convictions after one gun was found in the kitchen and another in a bedroom. The man also had a backpack containing cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines, a warrant says.

Daphne Bolton, who says her brother was a talented singer with a big heart, wants to know why he was shot and wants the officers involved to be fired and charged. She also wants an end to “no-knock” warrants.

Bolton said she was at work at a bank in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Dec. 17 when she got a Facebook message from her brother’s daughter saying he’d been shot. The hours that followed are a blur, but she remembers pacing in her home, calling hospitals near Atlanta to try to find him before eventually learning he’d died.

Her anger and grief are still raw.

The two siblings were born about a year apart and grew up, along with an older sister who died five years ago from complications of multiple sclerosis, in a tightknit family in Mississippi. As teenagers, they moved to South Carolina with their mother after their parents divorced.

Johnny Bolton never really liked school, but he was funny and well liked and drew a crowd when he’d sing in public. He began dabbling with drugs in his late teens, possibly as a way to cope with their parents’ divorce, his sister said. He moved to the Atlanta area as a young man.

Daphne Bolton saw her brother a couple of times a year, but spoke to him more often. She treasures a memory from one of her birthdays when her brother came to surprise her and the family went bowling. Since his death, she’s regretted not going to a family reunion last summer where he was set to sing.

Johnny Bolton loved women and always had a girlfriend, some of whom reached out to his sister for advice about him. He’d been working at a carwash and was popular with customers and staff there, Daphne Bolton said.

Johnny Bolton ran into trouble with the law over the years, mostly drug and misdemeanor offenses, and spent some time locked up. He’d often call his sister to ask for money and she’d send it. Even though she didn’t agree with some of her brother’s choices, she figured it was safer if he got money from her.

“He always told me, he said, ‘Baby Sis, I’m gonna get better.’ I said, ‘I know you are,’” Daphne Bolton said through tears. “I never gave up hope that he would get better. Now I, unfortunately, will never get to see that day.”

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