Fifteen people were shot Tuesday evening in Chicago over a six-hour period on the eve of the mid-week Fourth of July holiday.
A 10-year-old girl who had been playing near an open fire hydrant was shot around 11:20 p.m. in the 200 block of North Leamington Avenue in the city's Austin neighborhood, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The girl was shot in the left arm and abdomen and was taken to Oak Park's West Suburban Medical Center in critical condition before being transferred to Stroger Hospital. Her condition has since stabilized, but she may still need more surgery, according to the paper.
A 24-year-old man was also injured in the right heel in the same shooting. He is listed in good condition, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
The two are among at least 15 people wounded in separate shootings over six hours in the city.
Among the other incidents was a 15-year-old boy was shot in the left arm around 5 p.m. in the 8500 block of South Peoria while playing basketball.
A drive-by shooting injured three in the city's Uptown neighborhood early Tuesday evening, NBC Chicago reports. Two women were in critical condition after one was shot in the back and the other in the knee. A man with them was also shot in the leg.
The Tuesday violence comes on the heels of a weekend during which at nine people were killed and 17 hurt by gun violence in the city.
As The Daily Beast noted in a Monday column, Chicago's murder rate is in the midst of a surge not seen since 2003. The unrelenting gun violence prompted the city, last week, to launch a pilot partnership with anti-violence group CeaseFire.
With the July 4 holiday arriving in the middle of a heat wave, police held a roll call in front of Water Tower Place on Michigan Avenue with the hopes of putting the city at ease.
"What we want to emphasize is that police are committed to keeping the downtown area, as well as the city of Chicago, safe during this holiday period," Deputy Chief Eddie Johnson told NBC Chicago.
No one is in custody in any of the Tuesday shootings as of Wednesday morning.