Chicago rounds out 2016 with nearly 800 homicides, up almost 60 percent from 2015

Brett T. | 4:22 PM on December 31, 2016

While plenty of media outlets have put together retrospectives of all of the celebrities who have passed away in 2016, the Chicago Sun-Times is kicking off 2017 with a photo montage of more than 600 homicide victims — and even that falls short of the year’s total, which is closer to 800.

"Something insidious has crept into our midst." Nearly 780 people have been killed in Chicago in 2016. https://t.co/p3d8zPJMF2 pic.twitter.com/eEywKljKKZ

— Chicago Sun-Times (@Suntimes) December 31, 2016

The montage — comprising “every victim’s photo that the newspaper could obtain” — will wrap Sunday’s print edition. Homicides in Chicago were up nearly 60 percent in 2016, though the final number is difficult to pin down … the Chicago Tribune reports that there were 10 shootings, four of them fatal, between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning.

Chicago’s death toll is so high this year it’s driving up the murder rate for the country’s biggest citieshttps://t.co/jq3DaYBfY4

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) December 20, 2016

The Washington Post reports that while the homicide rate is up around 14 percent overall for the country’s 30 biggest cities, Chicago alone is largely responsible for skewing that result, accounting for almost 44 percent of the overall increase.