15 People Injured in Shooting Outside Chicago Funeral Home 

At least 15 people were injured in a shooting outside a Chicago funeral home on Tuesday, police say, as mourners attended a memorial event for a man who was fatally shot last week.

The victims include at least 10 women ranging in age from 21 to 65, two of whom are in serious condition, the Chicago Tribune reports. Five men were injured, ranging in age from 22 to 32, and at least four are reported to be in serious condition.

The shooting occurred in the Gresham neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. In a press conference Tuesday night, First Deputy Superintendent Eric Carter said attendees outside a funeral home were shot at from a black vehicle. Some attendees exchanged gunfire with the occupants of the vehicle, which then crashed, Carter said.

According to Carter, the people in the vehicle fled the scene. It was not immediately clear if anyone in the vehicle had been injured or how many people took part in the shooting, he said, however detectives are interviewing at least one person of interest.

Carter told reporters that police had assigned a beat car to monitor the funeral “just as a precaution” due to its size.

The shooting comes during a surge in violence in Chicago, where 414 homicides have taken place in 2020, a dramatic rise from the same time period last year, when there were 275 killings, according to the Associated Press.

“While families were mourning at a funeral in Auburn Gresham, cowardly gunmen opened fire,” Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot tweeted Tuesday night. “When a person picks up a gun, we suffer as a city,” she continued. “This cannot be who we are.”

The incident occurred as President Trump’s purported plans to deploy federal agents to Chicago as part of an effort to control the violence continue to unfold this week. Activists and local officials in Chicago have resisted the move, especially after federal agents deployed in recent weeks to Portland, Ore. to quell ongoing Black Lives Matter protests have been seen violently suppressing demonstrators, journalists and others on the ground by using tear gas and rubber bullets.

While Lightfoot at first threatened to sue Trump if he decided to send federal officers to the city, she said on Tuesday that the city’s law enforcement could work with the federal agents to fight crime and use the resources to bolster federal agencies already operating in Chicago, such as the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

“We welcome actual partnership,” Lightfoot said, according to the Tribune. “But we do not welcome dictatorship, we do not welcome authoritarianism and we do not welcome unconstitutional arrest and detainment of our residents.”