CHICAGO — With a month left in the year, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office has already recorded more than 1,000 homicides, the most in almost 30 years.
The office passed the grim milestone over the holiday weekend, bringing it to 1,009 homicides as of Tuesday. The majority of the homicide victims were killed by people using guns, and more than 90 percent of the victims are Black or Latino.
The last time Cook County saw more than 1,000 homicides was in 1994, when it recorded 1,141.
Homicides have skyrocketed in Cook County over the past two years. In 2020, there were 986 homicides, a 40 percent jump over 2019. This year’s toll so far is nearly a 50 percent jump from 2019.
Eighty-one percent of the homicide victims are Black, and about 15 percent are Latino, according to the medical examiner’s office.
Out of 1,009 homicides, 927 were gun-related and 777 occurred in Chicago, where gun violence has remained stubbornly high during the pandemic.