5 Young People Found Dead In Chicago
City's Violent Spring Continues As Bodies Are Discovered In Ransacked House
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Play CBS Video Video Chicago Murders Skyrocket Angry parents decry lack of action after 13 students were shot in one weekend in Chicago. The wave of gun violence is stirring issues of class and race, reports Cynthia Bowers.
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Video Five Found Dead In Chicago The bodies of five young people, all in their twenties, were found apparently shot to death in a house on the south side of Chicago. WBBM-TV's Joanie Lum reports.
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Neighbors look on as Chicago Police investigate a crime scene where five people were found dead on Chicago's South Side Wednesday, April 23, 2008. (AP Photo/Paul Beaty)
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Chicago Police investigate a crime scene where three men and two women were found dead inside a house in Chicago's South Side, Wednesday, April 23, 2008. (AP Photo/Paul Beaty)
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It appeared the three men and two women had been shot, but investigators were waiting for the Cook County medical examiner's office to confirm a cause of death, said Chief of Detectives Thomas Byrne. Autopsies were scheduled for Thursday, the medical examiner's office said.
"This is very serious," Byrne said at a news conference near the two-story house. "There's five victims. There's five families right now that are grieving over this."
All the victims were in their 20s, and they all knew each other, said Deputy Chief Eugene Williams. There were signs of forced entry into the house, which appeared to have been ransacked, Williams said.
A woman visiting the house found the bodies Wednesday afternoon, police spokeswoman Monique Bond said.
Police did not have offenders in custody but did not believe a killer was on the loose, Bond said. It was possible the victims knew the offender, she said.
"We don't think that the neighbors need to worry," she said. "We believe that it's been contained inside this residence."
Police declined to comment on whether the scene was a murder-suicide.
They cordoned off a section of the residential street as neighbors milled around, talked in groups and watched.
Bernard Scales, who said he is the grandfather of one of the victims, said the deceased were "good kids."
"They weren't gangbangers and they weren't into drug-dealing. I bet somebody over there thought they were into something, but they weren't," Scales told the Chicago Tribune.
There's five families right now that are grieving over this.
Chief of Detectives Thomas ByrneOne man died and three others were wounded, including one of the alleged offenders, in shootings late Monday in a McDonald's restaurant parking lot on the South Side.
The recent violence followed a six-month period of deadly violence against Chicago public school students, reports CBS News correspondent Cynthia Bowers.
Since September, 24 students have been murdered. Last school year 34 students were killed, an average of one child getting murdered every eight days.
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."





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See all 166 CommentsThat way people will find other ways to kill one another and hopefully it will be more gruesome and entertaining.
It is just too easy and efficient when a trigger is pulled!
Posted by TawpDawg11 at 11:29 PM : Apr 24, 2008
+ report abuse
*******
its a failed liberal experiment
Posted by TawpDawg11 at 11:29 PM : Apr 24, 2008,,,
You want the truth, all our good guys, cooler heads that normally keep the peace and calm things down here in the U.S. are now doing that in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we need them back home doing that here for us, not over there, and its as simple as that! Keeping it real!
Posted by hunterdon6 at 08:10 PM : Apr 24, 2008
Good post and thank you.
As a Democrat, it is sickening to me how these tragedies are used as fodder for "gun control."
For goodness sakes - I am a Democrat and I have a bunch of firearms for hunting and protection.
And I am sick of the Repubs stating there should be no limits as to who owns guns, and the amount of ammo in a clip, or its ability to repeat.
Only the most thoughtful can determine how and why this tragedy came to be. There are many factors.
And, placing more guns on the street is not going to solve the problem. People who commit these crimes are already placing themselves at risk of being killed. If someone doesn''t care about himself and is only living in the present, he or she is not going to care whether the person has a gun or not. - Posted by whatithink at 09:18 AM : Apr 24, 2008
The people who died did not die of a lack of gun control. If anything, they may have died because of it.
According to the article, these victims were not involved with drugs or gangs. The home in which they were killed had been ransacked. It sounds like they were murdered to eliminate potential witnesses. The existing restrictive gun control laws in Chicago may have been a significant contributing factor in facilitating their deaths.
Nobody genuinely advocates arming everyone on the streets. Reasonable people trained to properly operate a firearm should not have to risk criminal penalties for exercising their right to defend their own lives, especially in their own homes.
Those of us against gun control are overwhelmingly in favor of liberty, personal responsibility, and the enforcement of laws which punish criminal behavior, instead of punishing those who obey the law. That you are not is shameful.
There is a lot of hypocrisy in our country. You''ve got Christians who consider greed a moral right. You''ve got Christians who don''t believe in evolution but support social darwinism. Go figure.
Posted by whatithink
You''re welcome. But what gets me is they are the ones who call themselves Christians. What happened to the Christian compassion idea?
One minute you''re prosletysing (sp?) about morals, next your saying take ''em out and shoot ''em. What are you a misguided Christian or a misguided redneck?
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