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 There have been seven shootings on Chicago expressways so far this
year, none of them fatal. Last year there were 40 shootings, up from
19 a year earlier. Of those 59 shootings only one of them was fatal,
in 2014, the state police said.
The jump in highway shootings comes as murders and shootings through
the city have surged. Chicago had more than 480 murders in 2015, up
from 407 a year earlier, and there were 51 murders in January, the
highest number for any month of January since 2000.
Most of the highway shootings are at night, from one car to another,
a state police official said on Thursday. The official, who said he
was not authorized to be named, said it was not clear why such
shootings had increased.
 "Over the last couple of years, gang-related gun violence has
escalated and is shifting onto the Chicago expressways," the state
police said in a statement earlier this week. "Expressway shootings
pose an extreme danger to the motoring public and cause the affected
expressway's lanes to be shut down for hours at a time to process
rolling crime scenes."
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Expressways inside Chicago are the jurisdiction of state police, but
Chicago police and Cook County Sheriff's police will coordinate with
the state police on the drive to combat expressway shootings, the
state police said.
(Reporting by Fiona Ortiz; Editing by Bill Rigby)
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