The celebration of the 4th of July, Independence Day, has once again been stained with blood in the US. The traditional civic parade that was held in Highland Park, in the State of Illinois, was interrupted ten minutes after starting by a shooting that, according to the official website of the town, has caused at least five deaths and 16 people injured, who have required hospitalization.
Shortly before, the Governor of Illinois, Democrat Jay Robert Pritzker had reported nine injuries as a result of the shooting.
To his testimony is added that of other participants and spectators, who said they had seen five bodies covered in blood on the ground.
The sound of the detonations caused a stampede from the hundreds of people who had gathered at the stop.
The authorities of Highland Park, a town of 30,000 inhabitants in the Chicago suburbs, announced the cancellation of the parade and asked citizens to avoid downtown, where the incident took place.
“We are assisting Highland Park Police with a shooting in the area of the Independence Day parade route.
STAY OUT OF THE AREA – Please allow law enforcement and emergency crews to do their job,” the Lake County Sheriff's Office tweeted.
A neighboring town also canceled planned celebrations.
https://twitter.com/NancyRotering/status/1543987799279501313
“We heard something that sounded like multiple gunshots or fireworks.
We hit the ground and then ran to a covered parking lot where we were parked.
There was a lot of screaming and panic, ”she said on her Twitter account Elissa Kaufman, a native of the town and producer for CBS in Chicago, who had traveled to Highland Park to watch the parade with her family.
Another witness, Miles Zaremski, said he heard what he thought were between 20 and 25 shots and told local CNN that he saw at least one person covered in blood on the ground.
Another viewer, Hugo Aguilera, captured on video the arrival of an ambulance and a police car with sirens on, CNN reported.
The sound of the detonations caused a stampede of the participants and spectators of the act.
Armed violence, that structural phenomenon that for the White House has the characteristics of an epidemic, usually suffers an upswing in the summer months, and the celebration of the 4th of July is not at all unrelated to the spiral.
In Chicago, nine people have died from the impact of a firearm during the long holiday weekend, out of a total of 57 people shot.
A smaller balance, if compared to the victims registered last year in the same period, 19 dead and more than a hundred injured, or the calculation of last weekend, six dead and 27 injured.
The bridge, which also registers one of the travel peaks of the year and which this year has been underlined by the complications of air traffic, with many canceled flights, is a date marked in red on the police calendar, so, In anticipation of an increase in events, the Chicago police superintendent had warned before the weekend of an extraordinary deployment of officers on the streets.
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