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The shooting death of an 11-year veteran of the Illinois State Police was deemed suicide.
The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office and Police said the determination followed an autopsy on the body of 36-year-old Gerald Mason, according to the Chicago Tribune. Mason had suffered a gunshot wound.
Mason was on duty when his body was found in his police vehicle and he was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center on Friday afternoon, the Tribune reported.
“It’s a sad moment. We are in pain. Mason’s family is also in a lot of pain today,” Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said at a press conference, according to the Tribune. “We ask for your thoughts and love for his family and the Illinois State Police family.”
Mason’s death came just a day after Illinois State Police issued a gun violence statement announcing they would increase patrol presence “during peak periods of criminal activity.” , according to the Tribune.
This statement follows an overall increase in gun violence in Chicago and violent crime across the country.
The Chicago district, where Mason was patrolling, recorded 180 highway shootings in 2021, more than double the number of shootings at that time in 2020, the Tribune reported.
Chicago also recently installed “bleeding control kits” as part of a new Safe Chicago program to combat gun violence. Each kit includes tourniquet, gauze, scissors, gloves and an instruction manual on how best to use it in a “life-threatening bleeding emergency”.
Outside of Chicago and nationwide, homicides were up nearly 30% from 2019 according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report for 2020, marking the largest increase in a single year. Chicago was one of the cities that did not provide data to the FBI for this report, making the reported national information far from complete.
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