Early Sunday morning, 26-year-old Daniel Cardova was fatally gunned down in the Brighton Park neighborhood in Chicago’s South Side by two people carrying rifles in what Chicago police First Deputy Superintendent Kevin Navarro called “a gang-related murder.”
Later that afternoon, a small crowd gathered for a makeshift vigil honoring Cardova. They brought liquor bottles, candles and a heart-shaped balloon to build a memorial to the young man, the Chicago Tribune reported.
But the violence didn’t stop.
Bullets ripped through the vigil crowd at roughly 5:20 p.m., injuring eight and killing two. One of the deceased was a man in his mid-20s, and the other a woman of unknown age, police told the Chicago Tribune..
Details about the shooting are scant at this time.
“The people shot were participating in a memorial for a subject that was murdered earlier in the day, and during this memorial, two subjects came out of an alley east of the location … and opened fire with rifles,” Navarro said.
Killings at vigils or remembrances for others killed are nothing new in Chicago, where gun violence and particularly gang-related gun violence is spiraling out of control.
In January, seven mourners for a woman killed near a grade school, including a 12-year-old boy, were shot.
Of the latest shootings, Deputy Chief Kevin Ryan said police “have a fairly good idea who we’re looking for,” adding that they were “flooding the area.”
“We have a fairly good idea of the conflict involved and where we need to be deployed,” he said. “And right now we’re trying to saturate the area to make sure nothing else happens tonight or in the next couple days.”
Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said on Twitter the incident is “believed to be a gang related retaliation for” the earlier shooting.
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