Chicago Negro Violence Soars off the Charts! AT LEAST 50 MURDERS - OVER 250 SHOT

Two hours into 2016, DeAndre Holiday, a 24-year-old father of three, became another sad statistic of Chicago's runaway violence, fatally shot in the chest as he left a New Year's Eve party in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side.

In the weeks since, the tally of those killed has hit 50, making January the deadliest start to a year in Chicago in at least 16 years.

As many people died in January as in many summer months, the usual peak season for violence.

Holiday's mother, Gwendolyn, is trying to persuade her two other children — and possibly her grandchildren — to move with her to her native Atlanta.

"The violence is not gonna end. It's getting worse," said the 51-year-old, her eyes watering as she sat on her bed last week in her apartment in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood. "Every day when you turn the news on somebody's child, son, father, brother has lost their lives for no reason. It's senseless to me. It makes no sense. None."

By 8 a.m. Sunday, the final day of the month, about 280 people had been shot in January, according to a Tribune analysis of Police Department data. Shootings nearly doubled from last January and — perhaps more worrisome — jumped more than 60 percent from the first month of 2012, the last year in which homicides rose above 500.

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