Tuesday was the deadliest day in Chicago this year with eight people killed by gunfire, including four victims of a mass shooting in an Englewood home and a man found shot several times in a car on Lake Shore Drive along the Gold Coast.
Five other days have been close to that mark this year: Seven homicides on Jan. 7; seven on April 4; six on April 6; six on May 21; and five on June 11.
Tuesday’s homicides happened across the city, both in areas that have seen some of the worst gun violence this year and those that have seen some improvement. The victims were among 26 people hit by gunfire during the day.
The deadliest attack was in Englewood, which ranks number two in murders with 23 so far, just behind Austin which has recorded 26 and ahead of North Lawndale which has had 20, according to Sun-Times data.
Four people were killed and four others were seriously wounded when an argument apparently broke out inside a home in the 6200 block of South Morgan Street around 5:40 a.m., according to Chicago police.
It was the city’s third mass shooting in little more than a week. Two of the wounded remained in critical condition Wednesday as police reported no new developments. They wouldn’t say whether anyone was in custody.
Earlier in the morning, a man was found shot to death, and another seriously wounded, in a car that had crashed into a light pole on Lake Shore Drive in Gold Coast. The silver Nissan Sentra was in the northbound lanes when it crashed in the 1100 block of North Lake Shore Drive around 12:45 a.m., police said.
Two of the three people inside had been shot. German Villalobos, 32, was struck twice in the torso and was taken to Illinois Masonic Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead. A 20-year-old man was struck twice in the arm and taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where his condition was stabilized.
The shooting happened in the Near North police district, which had recorded no other homicides before Tuesday.
In Gage Park, a 16-year-old boy was killed and a man was wounded as they walked in the 5200 block of South Artesian Avenue about 10:10 p.m., police said. Juan Chavez was struck multiple times and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The man, 20, suffered three gunshot wounds to the back and was taken to the same hospital in critical condition. Police said the attacker was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and blue jeans.
Gage Park has seen only two homicides so far this year, according to Sun-Times data. It is located in the Deering Police District, which has seen a 7% drop in shootings this year although shootings have increased in the last two weeks, according to police statistics.
In Bronzeville, a woman was fatally shot about 6:15 a.m. The 21-year-old was found in an alley in the 4500 block of South Wabash with one gunshot wound to the head, police said. A witness told police they heard a gunshot and found the woman. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The neighborhood has recorded at least 10 homicides this year, ranking it among the 15 deadliest neighborhoods in Chicago. Bronzeville saw only one homicide during the same time last year.
A few hours later, police officers found a 26-year-old man on the sidewalk in the 3800 block of West Flournoy Street with gunshot wounds to his head and abdomen, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
He was shot in the Harrison police district, traditionally one of the most violent in the city. Shootings have spiked in the district in the last week or two, according to police statistics. It covers three main neighborhoods: Humboldt Park, West Garfield Park and East Garfield Park.
Humboldt Park has had 10 homicides so far this year, West Garfield Park 13 and East Garfield Park 15, according to Sun-Times data.
Tuesday also recorded one of the highest number of people shot in a single day this year, 26.
Among the shootings was an attack that wounded five people in West Garfield Park. The group was outside in the 3800 block of West Monroe Street when they were shot, possibly by more than one gunman, about 9:20 p.m., according to police.
A 29-year-old woman was struck in the back, a 39-year-old man was shot in the shoulder and leg, and a 40-year-old man was struck in the shoulder. They were all taken to Mt. Sinai Hospital, where they are all in good condition. A 38-year-old man and a 33-year-old man were both shot in the legs and taken to Stroger Hospital, where the older man is in critical condition and the younger man is in good condition.
The holes in the walls in the exhibit spaces at the South Side Community Art Center tells the story of a venue that continues to withstand the test of time — and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those holes are the remnants of the work of artists, musicians, muralists, sculptors, painters and photographers, among others, over an 80-year span.
The Bronzeville-based venue, founded in 1941 by legendary educator and historian Dr. Margaret Burroughs, Eldzier Cortor, Charles White, Bernard Goss, William Carter, Archibald Motley and Joseph Kersey, is a longtime space for Black creatives to showcase their work when other spaces overtly and covertly told them no.
This year, pandemic and ongoing structural repairs be damned, the SSCAC aims to kickoff its 80th anniversary on Thursday with a virtual event beginning at 6:30 p.m.
“We are one of 100-plus, WPA-founded [Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project] arts institutions. We, however, are the only remaining WPA institution that is still operating in its original location,” said Monique Brinkman-Hill, the SSCAC’s executive director. “The 1940s and 1950s, you think about that period of time — very segregated — particularly around the country and especially here in Chicago. When you think about the [SSCAC], it’s rife with history. … And we have made sure that we are continuing to elevate this institution.”
South Side Community Art Center executive director Monique Brinkman-Hill poses for a portrait at the South Side Community Art Center in Bronzeville.Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
The SSCAC, which is currently open by appointment-only, continues to be the home for generations of Black creatives such as singer Nat King Cole (the piano he played at the SSCAC sits in one’s of the exhibit spaces), photographer Gordon Parks had a darkroom in the SSCAC’s basement, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gwendolyn Brooks.
Various exhibits and community outreach over the decades has garnered the SSCAC a lofty status in the annals of Chicago Black history. Local urban historian Shermann Thomas added the SSCAC to his sold-out Juneteenth tour highlighting Bronzeville cultural institutions.
Brinkman-Hill, who took over the SSCAC in 2019 just months before the COVID-19 pandemic shut everything down, says the restoration andrebuilding has been a long process.
“When you look at when people come here, I think it’s always important when they look at the walls because you see these panels, you’re thinking maybe we should get some new panels. But if you run your hand [over them], every panel is a place where a piece of art has gone,” said Brinkman-Hill. “That’s part of our story. There’s a sense of energy and synergy when you think about this space, and that [muralist] Charles White might have hung his pieces in one of these holes. [Artist] Kerry James Marshall was here. He and his wife got married at the center. There’s just so much history here.”
Holes from the numerous pieces of artwork hung on the walls of the South Side Community Art Center over the course of 80 years are a testament to the history of the cultural institution.Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times
South Shore-based muralist Dorian Sylvain, who began to hang out at the SSCAC as an art student in the 1980s, says its greatest strength is in its flexibility in terms of meeting the needs of the artists over time.
“As a young artist, there really weren’t many places to go, especially for young Black artists on the South Side,” said Sylvain. “And the South Side Community Art Center was one of those early places that became one of my creative homes of sorts. I would say, fundamentally, the value of the SSCAC for me as a young artist was being able to locally connect with other artists, and not only other young artists, but all three tiers — young, up-and-coming, to masters.
“The [SSCAC] is such a melting pot, and it also represents the full plethora of artistic disciplines that were going on. Sometimes, it’d be a rehearsal space; it would be a studio. So it’s been flexible throughout all these decades to what the needs of the artists are. I think its flexibility has been part of its charm.”
Muralist Dorian Sylvain (left) and Ron OJ Parson, a director, attend the 2017 unveiling and ribbon-cutting ceremony for a mural by Kerry James Marshall, honoring 20 women who have shaped the city’s arts and culture landscape, on an alley outside the Chicago Cultural Center.Ashlee Rezin-Garcia/Sun-Times
Brinkman-Hill and the rest of the SSCAC staff aim to add structural upgrades in order to keep their hallowed halls existing for another 80 years and beyond.
“We have a state grant that will probably be able to launch in 2022, and we’re going to look at doing a lot of projects that are overdue,” said Brinkman-Hill. “One of them is adding an elevator in order to add accessibility to the building. One of the things that needs to be done is to restore the windows. As a historic building, we can’t, in many cases, rip out the windows. We can’t replace them; we have to restore them.”
That ongoing restoration over time allows for artists such as Minneapolis native Faheem Majeed to come to Chicago, and spend most of his time at the SSCAC’s top floor working on his art and soaking up knowledge from established artists. He says that opportunity is why the institution continues to shine.
Arthur Brown (left) and Arthur Cockrell take photos at an African art exhibit at the South Side Community Art Center in 1968.Bob Black/Sun-Times
“I didn’t really have any real networks when I came to Chicago,” said Majeed, who worked his way up the ranks at the SSCAC from volunteer to curator and executive director (2005-2011). “So many artists have come through there, and found a home. It’s a home, and a temple that needs to be honored and propped up and acknowledged for all of its contributions over these past 80 years.
“Black institutions don’t have the luxury of just being a museum. Our Black spaces, especially, had to be all things. So that means they not only had to have a collection, it had to be able to create a space for young people to learn art, for emerging artists to show their art, to have a space to meet.”
Chicago House AC Will Open On The Road On August 7th and play their inaugural home game at SeatGeek Stadium on August 21st vs. New Amsterdam FC. The National Independent Soccer Association (NISA) today released the 2021 Fall Season schedule which features the table debut of Chicago House AC, Chicago’s new professional soccer team.
Ten clubs will play in a single-table format of nine home and nine away matches. NISA’s Fall Season schedule kicks off on August 6th, with Chicago House AC playing their first NISA match on August 7th vs. Detroit City FC at Keyworth Stadium in Detroit, MI.
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Chicago House AC’s full schedule can be found HERE.
“The competitiveness of our league has been on full display this spring and is fueling our excitement for an expanded table in the fall,” says NISA Commissioner John Prutch. “The Maryland Bobcats FC has been a great addition this spring, and we are eager to see Chicago House AC add to the momentum we’ve been building over the last year.”
While most matches are scheduled for Fridays and Saturdays, each NISA club will play at least one mid-week match, as well. All Chicago House AC home matches will be played at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, IL. Venues for a handful of matches across NISA are still to be determined as facilities continue to emerge from pandemic-induced restrictions.
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Chicago House AC is in the process of finalizing their inaugural roster as they go into their preseason campaign beginning next month.
“We’ve been working hard to build a team that will make all Chicagoans proud,” says Chicago House AC Managing Partner, President and CEO Peter Wilt. “We’re excited to debut this team at Detroit City FC August 7th and at home August 21st at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview against New Amsterdam.”
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The NISA season runs through November 20th. Chicago House AC will host their final match of the Fall Season at SeatGeek Stadium on this date, hosting Cal United Strikers FC. Full 2021 fall schedule details can be found at https://www.nisasoccer.com/fall-season. Match broadcast and streaming programming will be forthcoming.
The systemic racism of Chicago’s public school system, as explained by John Kass.
Charter public school students, parents and advocates rally in 2014 at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago in support of choice. Hear them. (Anthony Souffle / Chicago Tribune)
If you want to talk about “systemic racism”, you need look no further than the Chicago Public School system and its overseer, the Chicago Teachers Union, Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass argues in his brilliant column this morning. (“Want to end urban hopelessness? Support real school choice.”)
The CTU virtually runs the system (and will be even a more powerful overseer when the school board gets elected). I suppose that wouldn’t matter if Chicago public schools were a howling success.
Far from it. If you think that disproportionately alone defines racism, then look at the disproportionate negative results for black children who pass through this racist system: The disproportionate number of failing students, the students who don’t graduate or go on to college, the absent students and the dropouts.
And the declining enrollment, the result of families trying to escape the violence and the number of parents finding a better educational experience for their children.
It’s a school system run for all of its “stakeholders” (teachers, administrators, vendors, contractors, etc.) except for the main one–the students. And those in control are making damn sure that only a few can escape. For example, the CTU has successfully “negotiated” a cap on the number of charter schools that are offering that escape.
Kass introduces the idea of the CPS and the CTU as a part of a systemic or institutionally racist system. He successfully and insightfully turns the tables on progressives/liberals/Democrats who detect systemic racism wherever you look in America. It’s one of Kass’ best columns and I urge everyone to read the entire piece.
Taxes are paid to provide America’s children a quality education. Taxes should not paid to support any particular way of doing it, especially one that harms children. The taxes should follow the children to wherever they and their parents find quality education. To the secularists who find it unconstitutional, I refer them to the federal aid (e.g. loans) that follow the students, to whatever school they choose to attend.
Haven’t we done enough to punish these children by keeping them unnecessarily out of the classroom? Parents need to rise up and demand better. You can start by joining other fed-up parents in the Illinois Parents Union.
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When Jim Buckner’s father Clarence became a dentist in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in the 1920s, Black medical professionals there had trouble finding an office in which to practice.
“He actually practiced dentistry out of his car and would drive to a patient’s house and help them that way,” said Jim Buckner’s son, Jordan Buckner.
After moving north to Chicago, Mr. Buckner, like his father, worked as a dentist.
He also opened grocery stores and travel agencies and served on the board of the City Colleges and Seaway, one of Chicago’s first and largest Black-owned banks, and occasionally ferried the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to and from O’Hare Airport, his family said.
Mr. Buckner also served as president of the Chicago Urban League, for which he lobbied to get more Black workers into the building trades, and hosted meetings at his home for Operation Breadbasket, which pushed for Black hiring at major companies.
Mr. Buckner, 86, died June 7 at his Hyde Park home of kidney failure, according to his daughter JaSaun Buckner.
James D. Montgomery, a Chicago lawyer and former City Hall corporation counsel, said, “He was an all-around good citizen.”
Always active, Mr. Buckner learned to skydive, scuba dive and ride a motorcycle in his 70s and was a soccer mentor for hundreds of kids in Hyde Park, coaching and refereeing games for decades.
“A week before he died,” his partner Kimberly Eddington-Nance said, “he was on the soccer field keeping score.”
Young Jim grew up in Vicksburg, where he attended “the Black school,” Bowman High School.
“Everything was segregated,” said his friend and fellow Vicksburg native Bettye Odom, founder of Bettye O day spa in Hyde Park.
He went to Virginia State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, then studied dentistry at the University of Illinois in Chicago, taking classes at its old location at Navy Pier, according to his daughter,
Mr. Buckner operated a dental office at 50th Street and State Street and another at the Harbor Point condominiums near the Columbia Yacht Club. His patients included singer Cissy Houston, the mother of Whitney Houston.
Mr. Buckner owned Food Basket grocery stores at 87th Street and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and on 79th Street in South Shore, according to his daughter, who said he also operated travel agencies at Harbor Point and on 87th Street.
When his sons Jordan and Justin got involved with soccer, he started coaching American Youth Soccer Organization teams. His players would practice on the Midway Plaisance and play at Jackson Park. Over the years, Mr. Buckner also coordinated schedules and rosters and refereed for traveling teams and University of Chicago Lab School teams.
When soccer parents got riled up, as soccer parents sometimes do, he’d stay calm and softspoken. Max Shuftan, 33, one of his former players, remembers his team once playing a lackadaisical final game of the club season. At halftime, the score was 3-0.
“He didn’t give us a long, loud or angry speech,” Shuftan said. “He simply looked at us and said, ‘Guys, we’re down 3-0. It’s the last game. Many of your parents are here. So what have we been playing for all year? I need you to score at least three goals in the second half.’
“Sure enough, we scored four goals in the second half to win 4-3. Getting that result, instead of us losing, earned us first place in our division.”
After a heart attack about a decade ago, “He just went out and tried to do all the kinds of things he wanted to do, which included a motorcycle license and skydiving,” his daughter said.
“In his 80s, we went zip-lining,” Eddington-Nance said. “We went whale-watching in Portugal and Hawaii. He was planning to do a 118-day cruise next year despite being on dialysis. He was trying to work on whether to send the equipment ahead of time.”
Jim Bucker exploring the Dominican Republic.Kimberly Eddington-Nance
Mr. Buckner also traveled to the Amazon basin, Ghana, Italy and South Africa and went whitewater rafting in the Grand Canyon.
“We have touched every continent except Australia and the Antarctic,” Eddington-Nance said.
In addition to his three children and partner, Mr. Buckner is survived by three grandchildren.
A wake is planned for 9:30 a.m. June 25 followed by a service at 10 a.m. June 25 at Leak and Sons Funeral Home in Country Club Hills, with burial at Oak Woods Cemetery.
JERUSALEM — Israeli airstrikes hit militant sites in the Gaza Strip early Wednesday and Palestinians responded by sending a series of fire-carrying balloons back across the border for a second straight day — further testing a fragile cease-fire that ended last month’s war between Israel and Hamas.
The latest round of violence was prompted by a parade of Israeli ultranationalists through contested east Jerusalem on Tuesday. Palestinians saw the march as a provocation and sent balloons into southern Israel, causing several blazes in parched farmland. Israel then carried out the airstrikes — the first such raids since a May 21 cease-fire ended 11 days of fighting — and more balloons followed.
The airstrikes targeted facilities used by Hamas militants for meetings to plan attacks, the army said. There were no reports of injuries.
“The Hamas terror organization is responsible for all events transpiring in the Gaza Strip, and will bear the consequences for its actions,” the army said. It added that it was prepared for any scenario, “including a resumption of hostilities.”
By Wednesday afternoon, masked Palestinians sent a number of balloons, laden with fuses and flaming rags, into Israel.
The unrest has provided the first test of the cease-fire at a time when Egyptian mediators have been working to reach a longer-term agreement. It comes as tensions have risen again in Jerusalem, as they did before the recent war, leading Gaza’s Hamas rulers to fire a barrage of rockets at the holy city on May 10. The fighting claimed more than 250 Palestinian lives and killed 13 people in Israel.
The flare-up also has created a test for Israel’s new government, which took office early this week. The diverse coalition includes several hard-line parties as well as dovish and centrist parties, along with the first Arab faction ever to be part of an Israeli government.
Keeping the delicate coalition intact will be a difficult task for the new prime minister, Naftali Bennett.
In Tuesday’s parade, hundreds of Israeli ultranationalists, some chanting “Death to Arabs,” paraded in east Jerusalem in a show of force. Hamas called on Palestinians to “resist” the parade, which is meant to celebrate Israel’s capture of east Jerusalem in 1967. Palestinians consider it a provocation.
In a scathing condemnation on Twitter, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, who heads the centrist Yesh Atid Party, said those shouting racist slogans were “a disgrace to the Israeli people.”
Bennett, who will hand over the prime minister’s job to Lapid after two years, is a hard-line 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.
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.
While the parade provided the immediate impetus for the balloons, Hamas is also angry because Israel has tightened its blockade of the territory since the cease-fire. The restrictions include a ban on imports of fuel for Gaza’s power plant and raw materials.
Israel imposed the blockade after Hamas, a militant group that seeks Israel’s destruction, seized control of Gaza from the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority in 2007. Israel and Hamas have fought four wars and numerous skirmishes since then. Israel says the blockade, enforced with Egypt, is needed to prevent Hamas from importing and developing weapons.
One of the masked activists firing the balloons said they launched hundreds of them Tuesday and will continue sending them in response to what he described as Israeli provocations in east Jerusalem.
After capturing east Jerusalem in 1967, Israel annexed the area 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 Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites, lie at the heart of the conflict and have sparked many rounds of violence.
In a separate episode, the Israeli military shot and killed a Palestinian woman who it said tried to ram her car into a group of soldiers guarding a West Bank construction site on Wednesday.
In a statement, the army said soldiers opened fire at the woman in Hizmeh, just north of Jerusalem, after she exited the car and pulled out a knife. The statement did not say how close the woman was to the soldiers, and the army did not release any photos or video.
In recent years, Israel has seen a series of shootings, stabbings and car ramming attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank. Most have been carried out by Palestinians with no apparent links to organized militant groups.
Palestinians and Israeli human rights groups say the soldiers often use excessive force and could stop the assailants without killing them. In some cases, they say that innocent people have been identified as attackers and shot.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa confirmed the woman’s death, identifying her only as a 29-year-old resident of Abu Dis, a West Bank town on the eastern outskirts of Jerusalem.
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Associated Press journalists Wafaa Shurafa in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, and Fares Akram in Cairo contributed to this report.
State environmental officials are asking Attorney General Kwame Raoul to take legal action against the company Chemtool after its chemical plant near Rockford exploded earlier this week and continued to burn Tuesday.
Raoul should “pursue legal action and require Chemtool to immediately stop the release” of pollution, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency said.
The legal move was announced as firefighters continued to battle a blaze that began with a Monday morning explosion in the village of Rockton. Dozens of employees escaped just before the blast, residents were evacuated and a large cloud of black smoke was still rising from the site Tuesday as the fire raged.
In a statement, Chemtool’s owner said: “We understand this action, and we will of course work with State and Federal regulators to address the concerns raised in the referral. This would include working to address any pollution issues as we have since this incident began and executing a site clean-up once the fire has been extinguished.”
The state EPA also wants Raul’s office to force the company to turn over records that may determine “the cause of the fire and an estimate of the nature and amount of any emissions of sulfuric acid mist, particulate matter and other air contaminants as a result of the fire.”
Authorities evacuated residents within a one-mile radius and told people as far away as 3 miles from the now-destroyed facility to wear a mask for protection. Federal officials are testing the air.
Trump weakened environmental protections
Also on Tuesday, safety advocacy groups said they are hopeful that a new review being led by the Biden Administration may result in strengthening laws in hopes of preventing the type of disaster like the one in Rockton.
Critics say weak federal oversight exacerbated by relaxed regulation under Donald Trump’s Administration contributes to such accidents.
The Rockton plant makes lubricating greases and industrial fluids but it’s unclear exactly what caused the fire or what’s being emitted, a concern of environmentalists who say government oversight of the chemical industry is too lax.
“You have no idea what’s in the air,” said Jane Williams, a Sierra Club activist in California who tracks chemical disasters nationally. The firefighters at the scene “are completely in the dark to what they are being exposed to, which is so wrong.”
Williams and others hope that a review in Washington that could take years will lead to more preventative measures taken by government and companies. For its part, Lubrizol, the company that owns the plant, says it has operated safely since 2012 after it bought Chemtool. Lubrizol is owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.
A black smoke cloud from the massive industrial fire at Chemtool on Prairie Hill Road in Rockton billows over a house on S. Bluff Road Monday, June 14, 2021, in South Beloit, Ill. AP
“We’re just really heartbroken by what happened and its impact on the community in particular,” Bill Snyder, vice president of operations for Lubrizol, said at a press conference Tuesday.
The accident follows the start of a review by federal environmental officials to evaluate safeguards at chemical plants. The day Joe Biden took the White House Jan. 20, he signed an executive order to strengthen chemical plant oversight following Trump Administration directives to relax rules. At the urging of the chemicals industry, the EPA under Trump worked to undo safeguards put in place just before he took office. Those rollbacks prompted a lawsuit against the Trump Whitehouse by Illinois and 14 other states as well as legal challenges from national environmental organizations.
Limited oversight
Even if Trump had not acted to scale back regulations, the Rockton plant still had limited oversight. Inspections are conducted by the Illinois EPA but it’s unclear how often and records are not easily publicly accessible. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspects facilities when there is a complaint and has done so three times since 2012. In 2013, the company paid one fine of $4,900 after OSHA cited it for failing to make sure dangerous machinery doesn’t start up and potentially injure workers. Another OSHA inspection was opened last month after an unspecified complaint, records show.
More than 30 years ago, jarred by a deadly gas-leak accident that killed thousands in Bhopal, India, Congress passed a law to strengthen the government’s hand in preventing chemical disasters. The Chemical Safety Board was created as part of that law passed in 1990 and the investigative body has been making recommendations for years, advocates say. But tougher rules weren’t put in place until the very end of Barack Obama’s presidency.
The Obama rules drew a rebuke from the American Chemistry Council, the industry trade group that later praised Trump’s rollback of the guidelines.
“Trump reversed all prevention measures,” said Emma Cheuse, a lawyer for the group Earthjustice. “The program right now is weak.”
Brett Chase’s reporting on the environment and public health is made possible by a grant from The Chicago Community Trust.
One by one, the family of Denice Mathis walked up to the police tape on the block in Englewood and reached out to each other. Some sobbed, others cursed.
Down the street, inside a two-story house with a gray stone front, lay Mathis and the bodies of two women and a man killed in a shooting that seriously wounded four other people early Tuesday.
Mathis, 35, was a mother of four boys and a girl, and had just taken her children to Six Flags over the weekend.
Also killed was Shermetria Williams, 19, the mother of a 2-year-old daughter. She was set to graduate from Country Club Hills Trade & Tech Center on Tuesday.
Know about important local and national developments as soon as they happen, including news on the COVID-19 outbreak.
The third woman who died in the attack was Ratanya Aryiel Rogers, 28, who lived in Rogers Park, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s officer.
The fourth fatality was Blake Lee, 35, who lived in the home and did odd jobs in the neighborhood, relatives said. He had recently lost his mother to diabetes and grandmother to several illnesses, including a bad heart.
The attack is the third mass shooting in Chicago in a little over a week and came at the end of a burst of violence that saw more than 25 people shot across the city in 10 hours.
The attack prompted Mayor Lori Lightfoot to say Chicago has joined a “club of cities to which no one wants to belong: cities with mass shootings.”
Chicago police officials investigate inside a house in the 6200 block of South Morgan, where eight people were shot, four fatally, during an argument inside the Englewood building, Tuesday afternoon, June 15, 2021.Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
Lightfoot — as she repeatedly has done — decried lack of federal action aimed at “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.”
The Rev. Donovan Price, who regularly goes to shooting scenes to provide support for gun violence victims and their loved ones, said he’s never seen anything like the last 10 days in the more than five years he’s worked as a street pastor.
“This is the worst ever,” said Price, whose voice quivered at times as he spoke of Tuesday’s tragedy. “It’s worse now than it’s ever been. It’s devastating.”
Chicago police released few details of how the eight people were shot but said it occurred when an argument broke out inside the home. They reported no new developments Wednesday morning.
Four of the victims were pronounced dead at the scene shortly before 6 a.m., and four others were taken to hospitals, at least two of them in critical condition. A 2-year-old girl in the home at the time was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital for observation. She was not shot.
A witness told police there were two volleys of gunshots inside the home, hours apart.
A woman crying, “That’s my baby! That’s my baby!” is escorted by community activists, including Andrew Holmes (left), to a vehicle after she tried to cross police tape at West 63rd Street and South Morgan Street, Tuesday morning, June 15, 2021. Four people were shot and killed inside a home in the 6200 block of South Morgan in an incident that left four others wounded.Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
The first was around 2 a.m., when the ShotSpotter system alerted police to gunfire near the Morgan address, according to Police Supt. David Brown. He 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 victims. Police recovered 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 lived at the address, a barber who cut hair out of the house.
Brown did not elaborate on the relationships of the victims and the shooter, or what the argument was about.
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.”
As officers worked the scene into the late morning, a crowd of distraught relatives and neighbors gathered along the police tape blocking off Morgan Street.
Chicago police keep watch and crime scene tape hangs outside a house in the 6200 block of South Morgan, where eight people were shot, four fatally, inside the Englewood building, Tuesday afternoon, June 15, 2021.Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
Mathis’ family said she was a devoted mother. “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. “She was a good girl — none of these knuckleheads,” the brother said.
Demetrius Williams said he was at home in Maywood, putting on a shirt and tie for his daughter Shermetria’s graduation when he heard she had been killed.
“This is unbelievable — a massacre,” said Williams, struggling to compose his thoughts as officers took down the crime tape around the Englewood house. “Why? Why did this have to happen?”
Williams still held the ticket for his daughter’s graduation. Back home were red roses and balloons that said, “Congratulations.”
A woman — identifying herself as a family member of one of the women who was killed — receives a hug from a supporter outside the crime scene tape at West 63rd Street and South Morgan Street, Tuesday morning, June 15, 2021.Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
“All she wanted to do was take care of her daughter and be successful in life,” the father said. “She meant the world to me. That was my baby girl.”
Also standing and waiting for answers outside the police tape was Raheem Hall, who grew up in Englewood and always had words of caution for his nephew, Blake Lee.
“I told him just to be careful out here. Stay away from the wrong crowd,” Hall said.
Blake lived in the house where the attack occurred. “He was a good guy,” said Hall, who now lives in Indiana. “He did no harm to no one. He was just trying to live his life as an ordinary guy.”
“He wasn’t really a guy that started trouble or anything like that, if anything, he’d try to diffuse a situation… he just got caught up in a tragic moment,” Hall said.
Blake had had a hard life, his uncle said, but he was also enjoying things recently, having traveled to Miami on vacation, his uncle said.
Price, founder and executive director of solutions and resources|Street Pastors, spent most of the morning on the Morgan block, praying over the victims and their families as well as comforting people who lived in the area.
He said he spoke to a young boy who said his mother was one of the victims who died. “The whole thing is bad. There’s a lot of family,” Price said. “This is a terrible situation and a lasting and damaging situation for the South Side [and] for the city.”
Similar scenes played out through the day at the hospitals where the wounded were taken.
A group of about 10 people waited outside the University of Chicago Hospital, where a 25-year-old woman was taken in critical condition after being shot on Morgan.
A 45-year-old man said his daughter remained in surgery as of 12:45 p.m. The man said his daughter worked at Lawrence’s Fish & Shrimp.
After he walked away, several women began to weep. One woman dropped to the ground and buried her face in her hands.
A crew removes one of four bodies from a house in the 6200 block of South Morgan after they were all shot to death when an argument broke inside the Englewood building, Tuesday afternoon, June 15, 2021. Four other people were wounded in the shooting.Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times
One person wrapped her arms around another and rubbed their back to comfort them as they stood against a chain-linked fence and faced the emergency room entrance.
“She got shot in the head,” another person sobbed on the phone as they walked away.
Outside Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, relatives said the man who lived in the home, James Tolbert, 41, was “alert and coherent.”
Tolbert operated a barbershop from his home after COVID-19 restrictions closed down the shop where he worked. The 2-year-old girl taken to Comer for observation is his daughter, according to Tolbert’s sister, Michelle Tolbert.
Waiting outside the emergency room entrance, Michelle Tolbert said she learned her brother had been shot from a Facebook post and feared the worst.
“There were a lot of people putting up ‘RIP’ posts, so I was worried,” she said.
Hospital staff would not let her up to her brother’s room but said Tolbert no longer was in critical condition. “They told me he’s awake, he’s responsive.”
Michelle Tolbert said her brother had a jovial “barbershop” personality and had studied to be an EMT before going to barber college.
“He’s a good person,” she said. “He definitely didn’t deserve this.”
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.
People watch as a crew removes four bodies from a house in the 6200 block of South Morgan after they were all shot to death Tuesday when an argument broke inside the Englewood building, according to police. Four other people were wounded in the shooting.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.
There have been 390 homicides in Cook County so far this year, according to the medical examiner’s office, nearly 300 of them in Chicago. This time last year, the county had recorded 342.
Lightfoot blamed the violence on the lack of national laws that would curb the flow of illegal guns.
“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 Englewood shooting happened “inside a single residence” — not out on the street or in a large outdoor gathering.
“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.”
Pressed about the perception of safety, she said, “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.”
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.”
PARIS — France on Wednesday eased several COVID-19 restrictions, with authorities saying it’s no longer always mandatory to wear masks outdoors and halting an 8-month nightly coronavirus curfew this weekend.
The announcement by French Prime Minister Jean Castex comes as France is registering about 3,900 new virus cases a day, down from 35,000 a day in the March-April peak.
Castex welcomed “very good news” and said the curfew will be lifted on Sunday, 10 days earlier than expected.
Wearing a mask will still remain mandatory outdoors in crowded places like street markets and stadiums, he said. People are required to wear a mask indoors in public spaces, including at work — with an exception for restaurants and bars.
“We have not known such a low level of virus spreading since last August,” Castex said, adding that the situation was improving in all of France’s regions.
“Those positive evolutions are due to the mobilization of the French and to the vaccination campaign,” he said.
Over 58% of France’s adult population has received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose. On Tuesday, the European Union nation opened its vaccination programs to those 12 to 18 as part of a push to protect residents as restrictions are gradually being lifted.
The French have been living under night-time curfews since mid-October. When the numbers of infections were at their highest level from mid-January to mid-May, the curfew was from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., with shops closed down and exceptions only for workers and quick walks for pets. It had been gradually pushed back to start at 11 p.m.
Terraces at restaurants and cafes, theaters, cinemas and museums all reopened on May 19. Last week, France reopened indoor spaces in restaurants and cafes as well as gyms and swimming pools.
Major sports and cultural events can have a maximum of 5,000 people, and all need to show a vaccination certificate or a negative test within the last 48 hours.
The nation has reported 110,563 confirmed virus deaths, one of the highest tolls in Europe.
The U.S. Army has hidden or downplayed the extent to which its firearms disappear, significantly understating losses and thefts even as some weapons are used in street crimes.
The Army’s pattern of secrecy and suppression dates back nearly a decade, when The Associated Press began investigating weapons accountability within the military. Officials fought the release of information for years, then offered misleading answers that contradict internal records.
Military guns aren’t just disappearing. Stolen guns have been used in shootings, brandished to rob and threaten people and recovered in the hands of felons. Thieves sold assault rifles to a street gang.
Army officials cited information that suggests only a couple of hundred firearms vanished during the 2010s. Internal Army memos that AP obtained show losses many times higher.
Efforts to suppress information date to 2012, when AP filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking records from a registry where all four armed services are supposed to report firearms loss or theft.
The former Army insider who oversaw this registry described how he pulled an accounting of the Army’s lost or stolen weapons, but learned later that his superiors blocked its release.
As AP continued to press for information, including through legal challenges, the Army produced a list of missing weapons that was so clearly incomplete officials later disavowed it. They then produced a second set of records that also did not give a full count.
Secrecy surrounding a sensitive topic extends beyond the Army. The Air Force wouldn’t provide data on missing weapons, saying answers would have to await a federal records request AP filed 1.5 years ago.
The broader Department of Defense also has not released reports of weapons losses that it receives from the armed services. It would only provide approximate totals for two years of AP’s 2010 through 2019 study period.
The Pentagon stopped regularly sharing information about missing weapons with Congress years ago, apparently in the 1990s. Defense Department officials said they would still notify lawmakers if a theft or loss meets the definition of being “significant,” but no such notification has been made since at least 2017.
On Tuesday, when AP first published its investigation, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., demanded during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that the Pentagon resurrect regular reporting. In a written statement to AP, the Pentagon said it “looks forward to continuing to work with Congress to ensure appropriate oversight.”
Blumenthal also challenged Army Secretary Christine Wormuth on her branch’s release of information.
“I’d be happy to look into how we’ve handled this issue,” Wormuth replied. She described herself as “open to” a new reporting requirement and said the number of military firearms obtained by civilians is likely small.
Poor record-keeping in the military’s vast inventory systems means lost or stolen guns can be listed on property records as safe. Security breakdowns were evident all the way down to individual units, which have destroyed records, falsified inventory checks and ignored procedures.
Brig. Gen. Duane Miller, the No. 2 law enforcement official in the Army, said that when a weapon does vanish the case is thoroughly investigated. He pointed out that weapons cases are a small fraction of the more than 10,000 felony cases Army investigators open each year.
“I absolutely believe that the procedures we had in place absolutely mitigated any weapon from getting lost or stolen,” Miller said of his own experience as a commander. “But does it happen? It sure does.”
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The Associated Press began investigating the loss and theft of military firearms by asking a simple question in 2011: How many guns are unaccounted for across the Army, Marines Corps, Navy and Air Force?
AP was told the answer could be found in the Department of Defense Small Arms and Light Weapons Registry. That centralized database, which the Army oversees, tracks the life cycle of rifles, pistols, shotguns, machine guns and more — from supply depots to unit armories, through deployments, until the weapon is destroyed or sold.
Getting data from the registry, however, would require a formal Freedom of Information Act request.
That request, filed in 2012, came to Charles Royal, then the longtime Army civilian employee who was in charge of the registry at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.
Royal was accustomed to inquiries. Military and civilian law enforcement agencies would call him thousands of times each year, often because they were looking for a military weapon or had recovered one.
In response to AP’s request, Royal pulled and double-checked data on missing weapons. Royal then showed the results to his boss, the deputy commander of his department.
“After he got it, he said, ‘We can’t be letting this out like this,'” said Royal, who retired in 2014, in an interview last year.
His boss didn’t say exactly why, but Royal said the release he prepared on weapons loss was heavily scrutinized within the Army.
“The numbers that we were going to give was going to kind of freak everybody out to a certain extent,” Royal said — not just because they were firearms, but also because the military requires strict supervision of them.
AP was unable to reach Royal’s supervisor and an Army spokesman had no comment on the handling of the FOIA request.
In 2013, the Army said it would not release any records. The AP appealed that decision and, nearly four years later, Army lawyers agreed that registry records should be public.
It wasn’t until 2019 that the Army released a small batch of data. The records from the registry showed 288 firearms over six years.
Though years in the making, the response was clearly incomplete.
Standing in the stacks at the public library in Decatur, Alabama, last fall, Royal reviewed the seven printed pages of records that Army eventually provided AP.
“This is worthless,” he said.
Told that in multiple years, the Army reported just a single missing weapon, Royal was skeptical. “Out of the millions that they handled, that’s wrong,” he said in a later interview. AP has appealed the FOIA release for a second time.
The data weren’t even accurate when compared to Army criminal investigation records. Using the unique serial numbers assigned to every weapon, AP identified 19 missing firearms that were not in the registry data. This included a M240B machine gun that an Army National Guard unit reported missing in Wyoming in 2014.
The Army could not explain the discrepancy.
Reporters also filed another records act request for criminal cases opened by Army investigators.
In response, Army’s Criminal Investigation Command produced summaries of closed investigations into missing or stolen weapons, weapons parts, explosives or ammunition.
Army spokesman Lt. Col. Brandon Kelley said that the records were “the Army’s most accurate list of physical losses.” Yet again, the total from the records provided — 230 missing rifles or handguns during the 2010s — was a clear undercount.
The records did not reflect several major closed cases and excluded open cases, which typically take years to finish. That meant any weapons investigators are actively trying to track down were not part of the total.
Army’s first two answers — 288 and 230 — are contradicted by an internal analysis, one that officials initially denied they had done.
Asked in an interview whether the Army analyzes trends of missing weapons, Miller said no — there were breakdowns of murders, rapes and property crimes, but not weapons loss or theft.
“I don’t spend a lot of time tracking this data,” Miller said.
In fact, in 2019 and 2020, the Army distributed memos describing military weapons loss as having “the highest importance.” The numbers of missing “arms and arms components remain the same or increased” over the seven years covered by the memos, called ALARACTs.
A trend analysis in the document cited theft and “neglect” as the most common factors.
The memos counted 1,303 missing rifles and handguns from 2013-2019.
During the same seven years, the investigative records the Army said were authoritative showed 62 lost or stolen rifles or handguns.
Army officials said that some number they couldn’t specify were recovered among the 1,303. The data, which could include some combat losses and may include some duplications, came from criminal investigations and incident reports. The internal memos are not “an authoritative document,” and were not closely checked with public release in mind, Army spokesman Kelley said.
Members of Miller’s physical security division were tracking the data, though Miller said he wasn’t personally aware of the memos until AP brought them to his attention. He said that that if he were, he would have shared them.
“When one weapon is lost, I’m concerned. When 100 weapons are lost, I’m concerned. When 500 are lost, I’m concerned,” Miller said in a second interview.
Each armed service is supposed to inform the Office of the Secretary of Defense of losses or thefts. That office also has not released data to AP, but spokesman John Kirby gave approximate numbers of missing weapons for the past few years. The numbers were lower than AP’s totals.
“There is no effort to conceal,” Kirby said. “There is no effort to obstruct.”
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Hall reported from Nashville, Tennessee; LaPorta reported from Boca Raton, Florida; Pritchard reported from Los Angeles. Also contributing were Lolita Baldor and Dan Huff in Washington; Brian Barrett in New York; and Justin Myers in Chicago.
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