Why is Chicago a murder capital? Clues from a bloody month
Malik Causey was one of 91 homicide victims in Chicago in August, the deadliest month in the city in two decades and the latest milestone for a metropolis becoming known for its murder rate.
An analysis of the August toll shows more clearly than ever who's dying in the Chicago slaughter and what's behind it: surging violence in a handful of the city's most impoverished neighborhoods, which are riven by loosely organized street gangs.
[...] more than 70 percent of those shot to death appeared on the Chicago police's "Strategic Subject List," which includes 1,400 people considered likely targets of violence based on gang involvement or criminal record.
To those outside Chicago, the rising murder toll might suggest a city wracked by widespread violence, but August portrays a much narrower picture of constant tit-for-tat attacks among gang members, with bystanders sometimes caught in the crossfire.
"People are arguing on Facebook over the color of some girl's hair, real simple things ... and they carry guns and when they finally catch each other, that's how it be," said Derrick House, 51, a former gang member and ex-convict who now works trying to prevent violence.
An acknowledged member of the Traveling Vice Lords, he was a veteran of the gang scene in the Austin neighborhood on the city's west fringe, which is dotted by boarded-up houses and of knots of men and teens standing around in the middle of the day.
[...] he had been in many scrapes with rival gangs, and had 56 arrests over the years, mostly in drug and weapons cases.
According to community activists, the eagerness to kill wasn't as great years ago when these neighborhoods were dominated by larger, more organized gangs that concentrated on carving out and defending drug turf.
Arshell Dennis III, 19, the son of a Chicago police officer, came home from college in New York to visit his family and was sitting on their porch when a man walked up and killed him with a bullet to the chest on Aug. 14.