5 students wounded in 3 shootings outside Chicago Public Schools in May
Just halfway through the month of May, five students have been wounded in three shootings this month outside Chicago Public Schools.
All five victims of the three shootings are CPS students, and all three shootings happened just after classes were dismissed for the day.
On Tuesday, gunshots sent students at Mather High School in the West Ridge neighborhood running for cover. It's a scene that's been too common these last few weeks.
"I was just at my locker, and then I just hear people running inside the building from Door 4, and then everyone's like, 'Oh, someone just got shot outside,' and everyone though they were joking, but they weren't, and so we all got so scared," Mather student Yarlia Urena said.
A 17-year-old Mather student was approached by someone while he was in his car around 3:20 p.m. Tuesday, and that person shot him in the left arm.
On May 7, a 14-year-old boy was shot while on the sidewalk outside Ida B. Wells Preparatory Elementary School in Bronzeville, about a block away from Wendell Phillips Academy High School.
On May 2, three students at Chicago Bulls College Prep were wounded in a shooting just a block away from their high school on the Near West Side.
All five victims of the three shootings are expected to recover.
Mayor Brandon Johnson was asked what the city can do to prevent such shootings.
"A lot more work to be done, but yet it does pain me, and we're going to continue to make those investments, particularly in our detective division, while also making sure that … we are removing guns off the streets of Chicago," he said.
Police said officers would be outside the school on Wednesday at dismissal time to provide extra security, but no marked police cars were visible outside the school Wednesday afternoon.
Former Chicago Police Cmdr. Patty Casey said a lot can be solved by having police present outside schools.
"There was a time when police could be proactive, and you could assign a couple of cars to a high school at school dismissal time just to help with traffic control, and that was a deterrent to violence," she said. "Now, because there's a lack of resources, a lack of police officers, you don't have officers going to school at dismissal time. You know, when you're putting them there after a shooting, you're a day late and a dollar short."
Casey said schools closing and merging presents an added challenge.
"You have gang boundaries where certain gangs are going to one school. Now they're all intertwined," she said. "To they're all there together, and they're not getting along any better, because that's not happening. They're still fighting."
The motives for all three shootings remained unclear as of Wednesday. No arrests have been announced in any of the shootings.
