Seven-year-old Heaven Sutton was selling cold drinks and candy at a street stand with her mother when she was shot to death, becoming the 253rd victim this year of Chicago’s surging murder rate, police said on Thursday.
Sutton and her mother, Ashake Banks, were about to close up their stand on Wednesday night when two men approached and began shooting. Heaven was shot in the chest, and a 19-year-old man standing nearby was wounded in the leg, police said.
“This is not about crime. This is about values. Take your gang conflict away from a seven-year-old,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel angrily told reporters.
“You have a seven-year-old selling lemonade,” he said. “Where were you raised and who raised you? Stay away from the kids.”
Emanuel pledged to make Chicago’s streets safe when he became mayor last year.
Chicago Police Chief Garry McCarthy, who has sought to counter a 37 percent rise in murders so far this year, said police had strong leads in the case but no arrests had been made.
Most of the 253 murders so far this year in the nation’s third-largest city have occurred in impoverished neighborhoods on the South and West Sides.
Heaven Sutton, 7, shot dead while selling lemonade in Chicago | News | National Post
Whose kind of town is it?
Sutton and her mother, Ashake Banks, were about to close up their stand on Wednesday night when two men approached and began shooting. Heaven was shot in the chest, and a 19-year-old man standing nearby was wounded in the leg, police said.
“This is not about crime. This is about values. Take your gang conflict away from a seven-year-old,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel angrily told reporters.
“You have a seven-year-old selling lemonade,” he said. “Where were you raised and who raised you? Stay away from the kids.”
Emanuel pledged to make Chicago’s streets safe when he became mayor last year.
Chicago Police Chief Garry McCarthy, who has sought to counter a 37 percent rise in murders so far this year, said police had strong leads in the case but no arrests had been made.
Most of the 253 murders so far this year in the nation’s third-largest city have occurred in impoverished neighborhoods on the South and West Sides.
Heaven Sutton, 7, shot dead while selling lemonade in Chicago | News | National Post
Whose kind of town is it?
