It was a violent weekend in Chicago, perhaps an ominous New Year’s start for a city that days ago boasted its lowest homicide rate in nearly a decade.
At least seven people were killed and two critically injured Saturday morning to Sunday night. In one 25-minute span Sunday morning, three men were found slain.
But Chicago Police Department officials warned against considering last weekend’s figure a harbinger.
“I don’t think you can take these numbers and say it’s going to mean a higher homicide rate for 1998,” said police spokesman Kevin Morison. “We need to continue analyzing homicides in their frequency and type before we start reading too much into one weekend and what it means for a trend.
“You have to look at each incident and look at the cause and the contributing factors. Again, this weekend, drugs and gangs seem to be the predominant motive.”
In 1997, 752 people were slain in Chicago–a drop from the 792 killed in 1996 and 824 in 1995. The numbers of most other violent crimes also have been falling.
In another homicide case–one that has not been added to Chicago statistics because the location of the killing is undetermined–police on Saturday found a 54-year-old man shot to death in the truck of a black Cadillac parked at O’Hare International Airport. Police said the car had been parked in the airport’s main parking garage since Dec. 21.
Investigators believe a drug transaction may have resulted in the killing of Donald Erving Hesiak of Farwell, Mich., said Grand Central Area Sgt. Robert Biebel, but they have no suspects. Hesiak died of multiple gunshot wounds, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.
Police said it appeared as though Hesiak, who was clad in a T-shirt and blue jeans, had been shot and then stuffed into the trunk of the Cadillac.
A security guard, while checking on a nearby car alarm, discovered Hesiak’s body after he noticed one of the Cadillac’s windows was open. The guard opened the trunk by reaching into the window and releasing the trunk latch.
Police in Michigan offered few details, but said they are assisting Chicago police with the investigation.
By Sunday morning, after three homicides Saturday, Chicago police were especially busy.
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Just after midnight, police were called to a West Side apartment building in response to a report a man had been slain execution-style. Police said they found Frankie Felder, of the 5600 block of West Iowa Street, in his bed, his ankles and wrists bound with duct tape. He had been shot in the head, police said.
A Grand Central Area detective said Felder’s apartment was in disarray, as if it had been ransacked. Police say the killing was likely drug-related.
Ten minutes later, a 30-year-old man was run down on a South Side street corner in a hit-and-run accident. Police said Javier Galindo, of the 4500 block South Wood Street, was walking in the 1800 block of 47th Street about 12:15 a.m. when a car drove onto the sidewalk and hit him.
And by 12:30 a.m., another man was killed.
Police said Lorenzo Aldridge, 27, of Chicago was leaving a friend’s home on the city’s South Side when he was ambushed and shot several times. Aldridge was walking from the back door of a home in the 9800 block of South Union Avenue when he was shot in the head and chest, police said.
By 4:15 a.m., police were on the scene of another homicide on the South Side. A 30-year-old man had been shot several times while he sat in a car that was stopped at a red light at Western Avenue and Marquette Road. Police said Julius Bynum, 30, was sitting in a back seat of the car when a car pulled up and its occupants fired.
No arrests had been made by late Sunday night in any of the slayings.