11 people were killed instantly after a week of deadly violence that swept west suburbs, according to the most recent incarnation.
Four people — a family and three daughters — were , killed in their Tinley Park home , Sunday night in” an act of foolish home murder”, law enforcement officials said. Prosecutors have since charged Maher Kassem, the husband and father of the subjects, with four counts of death.
Twenty miles north, in Joliet, seven persons were , killed in two shootings , on the same wall. The suspect — Romeo Nance, the boy, brother and brother of the seven killed — afterwards took his own life in Texas while being pursued by U. S. Marshals. Nance shot two other men in Will County, killing one, after he killed his friends, according to authorities.
According to a Chicago Tribune analysis of data from the Gun Violence Archive, a volunteer and research organization that collects data from over 7,500 law enforcement, advertising, state, and business publications, the violent acts are each distinct, but they point to a dramatic fact: over the past ten years, there have been more mass shootings than in any other state or city in the nation.
It’s an unwanted distinction, driven mostly by Chicago’s entrenched gun violence, figures show, as opposed to shootings like those in the suburbs last week or outliers such as the shooting that killed seven and injured 30 others at the 2022 , Fourth of July parade in Highland Park.
A decade of violence
In the last 11 years, Illinois accounted for close to 10 %  , of all mass shootings in the nation, with almost 490 across the state, killing 356 people and wounding more than 2, 080 others.
That’s more than California, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania and New York— all more populous than Illinois.
And perhaps not surprisingly, the data points to Chicago as the main source for the grim record.
The city saw 34 mass shootings just in 2023, resulting in 27 deaths and 143 injuries, according to GVA data, which defines a mass shooting as four or more people shot in a single event, not including the gunman.
Those totals pushed Chicago into the top spot nationally last year, findings closely supported by the city’s own database, which showed 32 mass shootings.
In the decade worth of data reviewed by the Tribune, Chicago tallied 234 deaths and more than 1, 560 injuries in 365 shootings.
No other city in the nation even comes close to the rate of one mass shooting every 11 days. In the same time period, the next three cities combined had fewer inhabitants.
In fact, if Chicago were a state, it would only trail California in terms of total mass events for the next ten years.
Between 2013 and 2023, these mass acts of violence have only spiked. In the first half of the decade, Illinois saw 165 mass shootings. In the back half, there were 321 — a 95 % increase.
In 2021, a staggering 689 mass shootings were recorded throughout the nation, making that number record high.
examining the “why”
The extent of the issue is known, but the causes are not as clear.
Law enforcement experts have long noted a deadly combination, which includes more high-powered weapons entering the streets and using them to settle gang disputes.
In January 2023, a statewide law went into effect that banned the delivery, sale, import and purchase of a long list of so- called assault weapons in the form of certain semi- automatic rifles, handguns and shotguns. However, authorities have raised concerns that nearby states ‘ straw-buying keeps Chicago rife with firearms.
In Chicago, police officers recover thousands of illegal guns each year — often more than 500 per month.
Myriad factors can dictate a mass shooting’s severity, authorities say: the number of people concentrated in an area, the distance to a trauma center, the quality of the gun, the ability of the shooter, among others.
Illegal” switch” devices have also become more common in recent years. A” switch” makes it possible to convert a semi-automatic handgun to a fully automatic one that can fire bullets with a single trigger pull, greatly increasing the chances of more fatalities in a particular shooting.
The random nature of mass shootings, according to a law enforcement source who is not authorized to speak publicly, makes them particularly challenging to tamp down because of the law enforcement’s knowledge of their thinking on mass shootings.
” Most of these mass shootings were either interpersonal ( conflicts ), squabbles at a bar, ( when ) somebody went and got a gun and came back and fired”, the source said. ” Sometimes two people are shot, and occasionally four people are shot. It’s all chance”.
Last Halloween, one of the most recent large-scale shootings took place in the Lawndale neighborhood near Roosevelt and Pulaski roads. No fatalities were recorded, but 15 people were wounded after a gun was fired inside a party where more than 100 people had gathered, police said at the time.
CPD officers soon arrested a suspect, 48- year- old William Groves, who was later charged with 60 counts of attempted murder, 15 counts of aggravated battery and other gun- related crimes. Groves allegedly left the room before returning and firing. That case is still pending.
While this arrest brings some justice to the 15 victims and all those who witnessed this violence that night, the trauma persists,” according to Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling during an October news conference announcing the charges against Groves. We are with you as you go through this because we are aware of the long-lasting effects that this violence has on our neighborhoods, our victims, and our community.
Unsurprisingly, parts of Chicago that experience the most gun violence overall also see the highest number of mass shootings. CPD’s Harrison District ( 11th ) on the West Side — an area roughly bounded by Division Street, Roosevelt Road, Western and Cicero avenues — routinely sees the most violence of the department’s 22 patrol districts.
Between 2013 and 2023, the Harrison District recorded 63 mass shootings, nearly twice as many as the Englewood District (7th ), which saw the second- most mass shootings, 34.
A look nationwide
Gun violence is n’t unique to the Chicago area.
In 2023, 718 Americans were killed and approximately 2, 700 injured in 658 mass shootings nationwide. There were numerous instances of gun violence in 334 cities, 44 states, and the District of Columbia, and these events did n’t just happen in one region of the country.
At a rate of almost two mass shootings a day in the U. S., the names and locations sometimes seem too numerable to remember:  , Monterey Park, California,  , Michigan State University,  , Nashville, Tennessee,  , Allen, Texas,  , Hollywood, Florida,  , Philadelphia,  , Lewiston, Maine.
Although Chicago was the site of two-thirds of all mass shootings in Illinois last year, they are not typically found in other areas of the state.
At a house party in downstate Macomb in March, one person was killed and ten others were hurt. In June, 23 people were shot, one fatally, in a late- night mass shooting at a , strip mall outside Willowbrook , in southeast DuPage County. And in a domestic dispute close to , Crystal Lake in August, three people were killed and one was hurt.
In total, there were 51 mass shootings in the state in 2023, in addition to the 221 fatalities that resulted from the massacre.
Authorities in the Joliet case claimed that the suspect committed suicide, but a second case was launched two days later.
On Wednesday, prosecutors in Will County filed one count of obstructing justice against Kyleigh Cleveland- Singleton, the girlfriend of Romeo Nance.
Police allege Cleveland- Singleton, 21, agreed to speak with investigators after Sunday’s shootings, but Cleveland- Singleton “made statements in order to prevent the apprehension of the suspect”, according to Joliet police.
She will be back in court the following month.
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