Two Chicago girls were on life support Monday after both were shot in the head on Saturday night.
Kanari Bowers, 12, and Takiya Holmes, 11, were shot just 30 minutes apart on the city’s South Side neighborhood in unrelated incidents.
Bowers and Holmes were two of 27 people shot over the weekend in Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reported. Nine children younger than 15 years old have been shot in Chicago so far this year, the Tribune said.
No suspects were in custody in connection with the shootings, and neither girl was the intended target of the gunfire that wounded them, police said.
Bowers was playing on a school playground with friends when she was shot around 7:15 p.m. local time Saturday. The bullet severed her spinal cord, WGN reported. Family members told reporters that hospital staff weren’t able to detect Bowers’ heartbeat on at least three occasions. She has not responded to relatives, the Tribune reported.
Just half an hour later and four miles away, Holmes was shot while sitting in a parked car.
“We’re trying to keep her here with us,” her uncle, community activist Andrew Holmes, told the local Fox affiliate. “We’re borderline at this point. The family is close around her bed.”
Holmes was part of Assata’s Daughters, a community organization serving black girls and women. The group, named after black revolutionary Assata Shakur, was raising money for Holmes.
More than 300 people were shot in Chicago in January, outpacing the January 2016 total of 292. But deaths from the shootings were down slightly, from 57 in January 2016 to 53 in January 2017.
Violence surged in the city in 2016. There were 762 murders in Chicago last year, up from 496 in 2015.
The city’s violence has become a political flash point in recent months. In January, the Justice Department released a scathing report on abuses within the Chicago Police Department. Less than two weeks later, President Donald Trump raised the possibility of federal intervention to deal with the city’s killings.
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