A 16-year-old boy shot and killed by Chicago police officers on the city's Gresham neighborhood on Saturday night was among five people shot by police over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.
The teen was shot around 6:30 p.m. in the 8700 block of South Sangamon Avenue, police said.
Officers responding to a call of shots fired in the area said they saw someone fitting the shooter’s description holding a gun, according to a statement from Chicago police.
The offender turned and pointed his weapon in the direction of pursuing officers who then fired at him, police said.
The teen was pronounced dead at the scene.
Family members, who identified the teen as Warren Robinson, say he was a good kid and did not deserve to be gunned down by police.
Witnesses said Robinson had his hands up in the air and was still shot multiple times.
Police said a weapon was recovered from the scene.
“Police tell you to drop your gun, drop the gun and nothing is going happen,” said Fraternal Order of Police spokesman Pat Camden. “You put an officer in fear of his life, he’s going to defend himself.”
The shooting is among five police-involved shootings to take place over the holiday weekend.
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Most recently, police shot a man around 9 p.m. in the city’s Englewood neighborhood.
Officers patrolling in the neighborhood saw a group of men standing on a front porch drinking alcohol and when they approached a man fled the scene on foot, according to a statement from Chicago police. While police were chasing the man, officers said he reached for a gun in his waistband and pointed it the weapon at an officer.
The man was taken to an area hospital for treatment.
On late Friday, police fatally shot a young man in the Portage Park neighborhood.
Police said officers approached the man just before 10 p.m. in the 3800 block of North Cicero Avenue when they saw “an object protruding from his waistband” and tried to stop him. The man fled the scene and pointed a “large revolver” at pursuing officers, according to a statement from Chicago police.
According to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, the man is believed to be in his late teens or early 20s.
Another man was seriously wounded by police in the city’s Rogers Park neighborhood and a 23-year-old man was shot in the chest by police in the 7400 block of South Vincennes Avenue Friday.
All of the shootings were immediately placed under review by the Independent Police Review Authority, which is standard for an officer-involved shooting.
No officers were injured in the shootings, but police Supt. Garry McCarthy on Monday said the 33 incidents where officers fired at someone nearly outpace the number of incidents in the last two years. There were 35 incidents in 2013 and 31 in 2012, he said.
