Gun violence in Chicago weekend recently left at least six people dead and more than 40 injured in the deadliest weekend of what had been a record-setting year for a decrease in homicides citywide.

Authorities say the first homicide of the weekend happened late Friday on the city’s West Side. The tally, which included at least 41 injuries, spanned Friday night through Sunday night.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports that it was the most violent weekend of the year in the city.

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The youngest victim was 15-year-old Michael Westley, who died Sunday, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office. Michael was shot by a Chicago police officer in the South Side’s Englewood neighborhood at about 10:50 p.m. Sunday, according to the Chicago Tribune

Pat Camden, a union spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police, said in the Michael Westley case that officers assigned to a gang crimes unit responded after hearing gunfire in the area. Police pursued three people they saw running away and during the chase, one runner pointed a gun at the officers, according to a preliminary statement from the Chicago Police Department’s Office of News Affairs. One of the pursuing officers then fired on the alleged gunman, the statement said. Michael was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Chicago was beset last year by a headline-grabbing spike in homicides and gun violence, which local officials blame on lax gun laws in jurisdictions outside of city borders. Crime experts, for their part, credited an explosive mix of feuding street gangs, drug-related violence, concentrated poverty, and inadequate opportunity for youths in poor neighborhoods, as well as cuts in the size of the police force. The 2012 jump to more than 500 homicides citywide prompted, in January, a reallocation of foot-patrol officers to 10 areas where crime is most rampant and other intervention tactics intended to drive down the high rate of street violence.

According to the Chicago Tribune, one of the other fatalities over the weekend was a result of a police-involved shooting. Other fatalities occurred after unidentified individuals opened fire in neighborhoods in the South and Northwest sides of the city. No arrests have been reported.

Chicago Police officials told the Chicago Sun-Times that more shootings took place during the same weekend last year than this year, and that there have been fewer murders in the city so far in 2013 than any year since the mid-1960s.

Last year at about the same time, 53 people were shot, nine fatally in one weekend, reports the Chicago Tribune.

1.The incarceration rate in state or federal prison or jail for men was 1,384 per 100,000 residents, for women 134 per 100,000 residents. The rate for white men was 736 per 100,000, for black men 4,789 per 100,000, for Hispanic men 1,862 per 100,000. The rate for white women was 94 per 100,000, for black women 358 per 100,000, and for Hispanic women 152 per 100,000.

Source: Sabol, William J., PhD, Minton, Todd D., and Harrison, Paige M., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2006 (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, June 2007), NCJ217675, p. 9, Table 14. 1.

2.Of the 249,400 state prison inmates serving time for drug offenses at yearend 2004, 112,500 (45.1%) were black, 51,800 (20.8%) were Hispanic, and 65,900 (26.4%) were white.

Source: Sabol, William J., PhD, Couture, Heather, and Harrison, Paige M., Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prisoners in 2006 (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, December 2007), NCJ219416, p. 24, Appendix Table 9. 1.”At midyear 2006 more black men (836,800) were in custody in State or Federal prison or local jail than white men (718,100) or Hispanic men (426,900) (table 13). Black men comprised 41% of the more than 2 million men in custody, and black men age 20 to 29 comprised 15.5% of all men in custody on June 30, 2006. “Relative to their numbers in the general population, about 4.8% of all black men were in custody at midyear 2006, compared to about 0.7% of white men and 1.9% of Hispanic men. Overall, black men were incarcerated at 6.5 times the rate of white men.

The incarceration rate for black men was highest among black men age 25 to 29. About 11.7% of black males in this age group were incarcerated on June 30, 2006. Across age groups black men were between 5.7 and 8.5 times more likely than white men to be incarcerated.”

President Barack Obama on Tuesday nominated three candidates — including a prominent African American judge — to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals while lambasting Senate Republicans’ “political obstruction” in slowing his nominees’ confirmation.

Judge Robert Wilkins, who was nominated by Obama to the D.C. District Court in 2010, joined Patricia Ann Millet and Cornelia Pillard as the president’s picks to fill the three vacancies on the Circuit Court.

During an announcement at the White House for the nominees, Obama, who initially faced four vacancies on the Court before getting one of his selections confirmed late last month, voiced his frustration with what he considers stall tactics by his political opposition.

“Time and again, congressional Republicans cynically used Senate rules and procedures to delay and even block qualified nominees from coming to a full vote,” Obama said Tuesday. “As a result, my nominees have taken three times longer to receive confirmation votes than those of my Republican predecessor.

“This is not about principled opposition. This is about political obstruction,” he said.