POLICE IN CHICAGO have said that two women who were killed in a drive-by shooting on Friday evening in the south side of the city were not the intended targets in the attack.
Chantell Grant (26) and Andrea Stoudemire (35) were members of the group Mothers Against Senseless Killings, and advocated for an end to gun violence.
They were shot at the same spot another young mother had been fatally shot five years ago.
The group’s founder Tamar Manasseh said: “That’s why we’re out here seven days a week… trying to create a safe place where people can learn to be neighbors and not kill each other.”
Manasseh said she wasn’t willing to accept the notion that Grant, a mother of four, and Stoudemire, who had three children, were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“They killed mothers on a corner where mothers sit every day,” she said. “You don’t have mothers killed in a place that is sacred to mothers and not take that as a message.”
Manasseh added that the women had been on the corner for hours on Friday handing out food to other mothers and keeping watch over a vacant spot the group has turned into a play area for neighborhood children.
She said Grant and Stoudemire had finished up for the day and had begun walking to a store to get food for themselves and their children when they were shot.
Anthony Guglielmi, a police spokesperson, said yesterday that a 58-year-old man was the target of the street attack. He was struck in the arm during the shooting, and is not cooperating with police.
“We have no information to suggest they were the intended targets,” Guglielmi said, adding that police are still seeking leads in the case. No arrests have yet been made.
Although homicides have decreased in Chicago in recent years, police statistics show that there had been 281 homicides so far this year as of July 28 – more than one a day.
With reporting from AP
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