The three men were shot as they stood beside a car in the pre-dawn darkness of a suburban crossroads. And within hours, two more were gunned down in ambushes on Chicago streets. In all, 10 have died.
Authorities say the burst of violence over the past month is a sign that gang warfare of classic Chicago proportions has broken out again.A federal crackdown on the 10,000-strong Gangster Disciples street gang has caused a power vacuum among its leaders. The result is a brutal struggle as lower echelon members try to shoot their way into control of the gang's lucrative heroin and cocaine trade.
"This thing is market driven," says George Knox, a Chicago State University gang authority, who says the gang's business can turn ruthless thugs into instant millionaires.
The violence began following the March 6 conviction of seven Gangster Disciples and one associate, the first in a federal investigation that has led to the in-dict-ment of 39 of the gang's leaders and their associates.
President Clinton is promising Chicago "gang-suppression" funds. He had planned to denounce the Gangster Disciples on Wednesday in a speech at the Justice Department, but the session was canceled because of the plane crash that killed Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 32 other Americans in Croatia.
The session was to take place just three days after three men were killed at a crossroads near Lockport, south of Chicago. Two of them were identified by police as Gangster Disciples, one through a gang tattoo and the other because of his arrest record. Police attributed two fatal ambushes in Chicago within 19 hours of the Lockport shootings to gang violence as well.
Knox believes the Gangster Disciples are the nation's largest street gang, active in 35 states and more organized that the Los Angeles-based Crips and Bloods.
Unlike other gangs, they are organized along the lines of a Fortune 500 corporation, with a chairman and board of governors as well as regents who preside over street sales of drugs. Convicted murderer Larry Hoover, who has become almost a household name in Chicago, is under federal indictment on charges of running the gang from his prison cell.
The gang emerged from Chicago's dilapidated Englewood district in the 1960s and gained power while federal prosecutors were busy cracking down on the once dominant El Rukns gang.
Gang warfare has flared on and off since the Al Capone era.