Tipsheet

Chicago Mayor Issues Biting Response to Cruz After Violent Labor Day Weekend

Leah Barkoukis
Leah Barkoukis  |  September 03, 2019 10:00 AM

While most of the media attention this Labor Day weekend focused on the mass shooting in Odessa and Midland, Texas, where seven people were killed and 22 injured, the death toll in Chicago was the same with 36 people shot.

The youngest was a 15-year-old boy who was shot six times early Sunday morning and pronounced dead just outside his home.

Davantae's sister Alexis said the teen had been sitting on the couch with his younger brother in the early morning hours of Sunday when he got a phone call.

"They called him and told him to come outside. When they told him to come outside and he was guessing he was going to see his friends," she said. "And they did what they did to him after they called his phone."

"Evidently whoever did it, he knew who it was because when I went to see him at the morgue, he had a shocked look on his face," Tracie said.

 Davantae was going to be a freshman at Marshall High School. His family said he had a lot of life ahead of him and was looking forward to playing basketball this year.

"We know the capabilities that he had. We know he was a good person. He was an athlete. He was a very smart person," Alexis said. "He is 15. Why would you want to kill him?" (ABC 7)

Twenty minutes later a man was killed and a woman injured in a shooting at a South Side party.

Then, an hour after that, a drive-by shooting killed one man and injured another on the Southwest Side.

On Saturday, two men were killed and three wounded when someone opened fire on a group of people on the front porch of a house.

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There was also a double shooting in Humboldt Park, which killed a man and injured another.

The earliest reported homicide of the weekend was a 42-year-old man who was outside with a group of people when shots were fired.  

The weekend proved to be more violent than the same time last year when four people were killed over Labor Day weekend and 23 people injured.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) took notice, tweeting that "gun control doesn't work."

"Look at Chicago," he said. "Disarming law-abiding citizens isn’t the answer. Stopping violent criminals—prosecuting & getting them off the street—BEFORE they commit more violent crimes is the most effective way to reduce murder rates. Let’s protect our citizens."

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot took issue with Cruz's assessment, telling him to "Keep our name out of your mouth."

"60% of illegal firearms recovered in Chicago come from outside IL—mostly from states dominated by coward Republicans like you who refuse to enact commonsense gun legislation," she said.