CHICAGO – Chicago authorities say seven people were killed and six wounded in gun violence in one day.
Among those killed Saturday was a 34-year-old man whose mother had already lost her three other children to shootings. Police say Ronnie Chambers, who was his mother's youngest child, was shot in the head while sitting in a car.
"Right now, I'm totally lost because Ronnie was my only surviving son," said his mother, Shirley Chambers.
Shirley Chambers' first child, Carlos, was shot and killed by a high school classmate in 1995 after an argument. He was 18. Her daughter Latoya, then 15, and her other son Jerome were shot and killed within months of one another in 2000.
Police say two separate double-homicide shootings also occurred Saturday about 12 hours apart.
In one, a 16-year-old boy and a 32-year-old man were killed.
In another, two men were shot at a hamburger stand on the city's South Side. Police say the victims were roommates in their 40s.
Chicago's homicide count eclipsed 500 last year for the first time since 2008. Chicago's homicide rate was almost double in the early 1990s, averaging around 900.
Last year's increase, though, stood in sharp contrast to New York, where homicides fell 21 percent from 2011, as of early December.
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