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After a mass shooting early Sunday morning in Chicago’s Austin
neighborhood left seven people shot, including one fatally, neighbors
expressed frustration that their calls to break up a large gathering
before the shooting went unaddressed.

A group had gathered outside in the 4800 block of West Iowa Street around
1 a.m. when an argument broke out, and unknown individuals started
shooting, according to Chicago police.

Police found a 25-year-old woman at the scene unresponsive with multiple gunshot wounds. She was transported to Mount Sinai Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Six other people were also shot. Five were transported to hospitals in good condition, and one was transported in critical
condition, police said.

When around 100 people gathered in a vacant lot a few plots down from her
house to loudly party hours before the shooting, Michelle Barnes said she sensed trouble. Cars blocked the street and filled the alleyway, she said Sunday afternoon.

Barnes said she called the police to report the chaotic crowd at 10 p.m.,
11:05 p.m., and a third time around 12:30 a.m. One police car came out to
the scene, but no significant response arrived before shots broke out, she added.

“I’m frustrated with the police. I’m frustrated with the alderman. I’m frustrated with everybody. Because it’s ridiculous,” Barnes said. “When
you call, they don’t come like there’s a problem.”

Police confirmed Sunday that the shooting occurred after a group had
gathered to remember a man killed in a car crash four years ago. Burnt-out
and toppled tea candles remained on the sidewalk at the scene of the
shooting Sunday afternoon.

When asked how police had responded to the gathering before the shooting,
a police spokesperson said the only available information had already been shared in a statement and at an early morning news conference.

Remnants of the violent shooting littered the overgrown, vacant lot. A
black SUV sitting near the scene had bullet holes in its trunk and rear passenger window. A few strips of yellow police tape remained. Purple
latex gloves commonly used by paramedics were scattered on the sidewalk,
where a bloodied shirt was left.

Barnes, 56, said she now wants to move. She’d be leaving the home her
parents owned, where she’s spent her whole life. She wondered aloud what
it would take to keep her block safe as violence seems to close in on it.

“We can’t even live in peace,” she said.

Larell Steel, Barnes’ next-door neighbor, said her sister across the
street and other neighbors also made repeated calls to the police ahead of
the shooting.

“Everybody on this block called them to get them kids,” Steel said, as the
two women talked on their porches Sunday afternoon. “This could’ve been prevented. This could’ve been prevented if they just came and broken them
kids up.”

Most of the block’s single-family homes are full of older residents, Steel said. The shooting was a surprise, but trouble has sprung up on the
typically peaceful street in recent months, she said, noting a rowdy
gathering on a nearby corner last summer and a brief stint of drug dealing
on an open side lot across the street last year.

Steel said she had been sleeping when the gathering started but woke up
when her sister called to warn her of the potential danger. She said she
called police after she heard dozens of gunshots.

Steel said she saw evidence technicians place dozens of yellow markers
down the street when she came out Sunday morning.

The young people who filled the vacant lot had seemed to come from outside
the neighborhood, said Steel, adding she wished parents would’ve prevented their kids from attending the ultimately violent gathering.

“They just come, they see a nice flat block and they take over, like we
can’t do nothing about it. And apparently we can’t do nothing about it,
because we call the people and we’re not getting no help,” Steel said.

On the other side of West Iowa Street, Carl Raynor also sat on his porch
Sunday afternoon. He said he woke up to the shooting the night before,
thinking the bangs were firecrackers until loved ones called to make sure
he was safe early in the morning. He’s lived on the street off and on
since 1976 but said he is hoping to move out of state now.

Raynor, 57, said he was shot in the back in May 2022 when he interceded as someone tried to steal his sister’s catalytic converter from her car. In
recent years, violence has seemed harder to escape, he said.

“It’s everywhere,” Raynor said. “Police can only do so much. People have
to speak up and say something, because once it’s one of your kids or
grandkids, you’re going to want some help.”

The youngest of the wounded victims was a 17-year-old girl shot in the
leg, police said. She was transported to West Suburban Medical Center in
good condition.

Three men in their 20s and one woman in her 20s were transported to
Stroger Hospital in good condition. A 29-year-old man with gunshot wounds
in his chest and arm was transported in critical condition to Stroger
Hospital, police said.

Area 4 detectives are investigating the shooting. Police said no one is in custody.

jsheridan@chicagotribune.com

oalexander@chicagotribune.com

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-austin-seven-people-shot- 20230604-yejvy6wzprhrrlnvcjpcybzjqm-story.html

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XPost: talk.politics.guns

After a mass shooting early Sunday morning in Chicago's Austin

Guns have prove time and time again to be the perfect weapon for killing Americans,especially rightists.


The American negro problem stems from our lazy ancestors who demanded
negro slaves do all their work for them.

Currently they enjoy anal sex with religious men.


Full List of Texas Pastors Charged With Abusing Children This Year
By Giulia Carbonaro On 12/9/22 at 9:51 AM EST


This year, at least 10 Texas pastors, former pastors and youth ministers
were arrested, charged or convicted for various allegations of sexual
abuse of children.

In November, 56-year-old David Lloyd Walther, a pastor for the Faith
Baptist Church in Round Rock, was arrested for the distribution, receipt, transportation and possession of child pornography, as reported by the
Austin American-Statesman. Walther, who told the FBI that he had a
pornography addiction, faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

In the same month, a 31-year-old former student minister at the Champion
Forest Baptist Church in Harris County was sentenced to five years in
prison after pleading guilty to online sexual abuse of a child. Timothy
Jason Jeltema pleaded guilty on November 17 to four charges of online
sexual abuse of a minor—including one charge of indecency with a child—one charge of sexual performance by a child and two counts of online
solicitation of a minor which were initially brought against him in 2018, according to the Baptist Press.
Stock Image of A Pastor
A stock image of a pastor standing behind the pulpit in front of a congregation. The Southern Baptist Church was shaken by the discovery of widespread sexual abuse of children among its pastors, workers and
volunteers this year. iStock / Getty Images
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In July, 48-year-old Chad Michael Rider, of Anna, was convicted in the
Eastern District of Texas for assisting former Denison pastor David
Pettigrew produce child pornography. According to documents and testimony
at the trial, Rider helped Pettigrew convince minors into taking sexually explicit photographs. He was found guilty of three counts of the sexual exploitation of children.

In the same month, pastor William C. Robinson, who at the time was working
for Chi Alpha Campus Ministries in Corpus Christi, was charged with
continuous sexual abuse of a child, to which he pleaded not guilty.

Also in July, Brian Pounds, a 45-year-old minister at First Assembly of
God in Vernon, North Texas, was charged with sexual assault of a child and delivery of a controlled substance to a minor, according to Vernon police. Pounds denied having had sexual contact with the child, but the girl
testified to the many times the minister had performed sex acts with her
and given her meth.

Baytown pastor Lawrence Hopkins was arrested in late June with the charge
of soliciting a minor online, according to Montgomery District Attorney's Office. The arrest of the 55-year-old associate pastor at Rollingbrook Fellowship in Baytown was part of a multi-agency operation to capture individuals who have been "actively seeking to sexually exploit children
via the internet in Montgomery County," authorities said.


Following the pastor's arrest, Rollingbrook Church sent a statement acknowledging the case and declaring that Hopkins' employment at the
church had been "immediately terminated." The church thanked the
Montgomery County Sheriff's Department for "their efforts to protect our children and pursue those who would seek to harm them" and announced they
were "cooperating fully with the authorities."

In April, the Nashville-based Southern Baptist news service Baptist Press reported that youth pastor Conner Jesse Penny, 32, had been arrested on
three counts of sexual abuse related to a minor. According to the police report, Penny, who was employed at the Inspiration Church, formerly known
as Mimosa Lane Baptist Church, in Mesquite at the time of the arrest, "had sexual contact with a female under the age of 17 years of age on multiple occasions between 2015 and 2018."

In March, pastor's son and Conroe church worship leader Jonathan Ryan
Ensey, 37, was found guilty of victimizing a congregant by committing
indecency with a child and online solicitation of a minor. He is serving
eight years in prison, as both sentences were served concurrently.

In January, Aaron Duane Shipman, the 44-year-old lead pastor at Bible
Baptist Church in Odessa, was charged with assaulting a teenage girl for
years, beginning when she was 16. The woman, who's currently 18, reported
the case to the Odessa Police Department. The church, upon hearing about
the arrest, issued a statement declaring that Shipman's contract had been terminated.

In the same month, 61-year-old Houston-area pastor Conrad Estrada Valdez
was charged of sexual assault of a child between the ages of 14 and 17, as reported by ABC. The case was brought forward in 2019 by a then-30-year-
old woman who said she was sexually assaulted by Valdez when she was 15.
Read more



The cases reported so far are limited to the charges brought forward this
year, and to the state of Texas. By expanding the search further back in
time or beyond Texas' borders, the list would grow much longer than the
one compiled in this article.

In October, the North Texas megachurch Denton Bible Church released a 2019 investigation revealing that a former youth pastor sexually abused 14
girls at two different churches. The pastor, Rob Shiflet, was sentenced in
2021 to 33 months in federal prison for sexually assaulting two girls on
church youth trips, and is now registered as a sex offender.

On December 1, a former youth pastor at a Southern Baptist church in
Missouri was charged with six child abuse-related charges.

In May, a document released by the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC)
revealed the case of more than 700 Baptist leaders—including pastors,
teachers, ministers and volunteers—accused or found guilty of sexual abuse
of children.

The 205-page document, which looks at cases dating back to a period
between 2000 and 2009, details the arrests and—sometimes—sentencing of
Baptist leaders found guilty of sexual assaults, soliciting children,
child pornography and more.

According to SBC, the list is the result of an internal investigation by Guidepost Solutions aimed at uncovering the cover-ups of cases of sexual assaults which were allegedly kept quiet by the church's higher-ups.

"This list is being made public for the first time as an initial, but important, step towards addressing the scourge of sexual abuse and
implementing reform in the Convention," a statement by SBC read. "Each
entry in this list reminds us of the devastation and destruction brought
about by sexual abuse. Our prayer is that the survivors of these heinous
acts find hope and healing, and that churches will utilize this list proactively to protect and care for the most vulnerable among us."

But the lack of a rigid structure within the SBC, which doesn't have an established hierarchy, might make bringing the necessary change to the
church difficult.

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