By Friday, authorities acknowledged that students and teachers repeatedly begged 911 operators for help while the police chief told more than a dozen officers to wait in a hallway at Robb Elementary School. Officials said he believed that the suspect was barricaded inside adjoining classrooms and that there was no longer an active attack.

“I feel confident in the plan that we have for this weekend, and really for the summer," Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Friday.

As part of a Chicago Tonight’s special series, “Turning Pain into Purpose,” we are joined by two mothers affected by gun violence to discuss the work they’re doing in the community.

Violence and other trauma have become common enough for schoolchildren that Chicago Public Schools developed a 15-page guide called “The Day After,” to help teachers and staff coach students through processing painful events.

Travis Cook, 53, has been charged with first-degree murder stemming from the killing of a 43-year-old man inside a train car downtown. The victim’s name was not released during a hearing Thursday, during which Cook was ordered held without bail.

The excessive force lawsuit says the seventh grader, who had been a passenger, was complying with orders from several officers running behind him through the grounds of a West Side gas station and screaming for him to put up his hands.

So far this year there have been 24 shootings in K-12 schools across the country. A sobering statistic that Illinois' Senator Durbin gave in his opening remarks of a Senate Judiciary Committee today. Senators questioned President Biden's nominee for the director of the nation's top gun enforcement agency — a position that has been vacant for seven years.

 “The expansion of the CARE program will ensure residents can be connected to trained specialists in behavioral and mental health, providing better outcomes for 911 callers and communities,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.

As part of “Chicago Tonight’s” special series “Turning Pain into Purpose,” Miguel Rios seemed to be doing everything right. At 18 years old, he was going to school, had a job and was there for his brothers and sisters. But this July will mark two years since he was killed, and his family has yet to receive justice. 

Today marks two years since the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. His death triggered protests across the country and calls for civilian oversight of law enforcement.

The city’s curfew now starts at 10 p.m. seven days a week and applies to 17-year-olds. The vote, delayed Monday by a parliamentary procedure amid a deluge of criticism, came over the objections of the ACLU of Illinois, which warned city officials that the change would “exacerbate tensions between the police and young people.” 

​​U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger laid in to Arroyo during the hearing, calling the former representative a “dirty politician who was on the take” and a “corruption super-spreader,” who “injected” corruption into both the Illinois House and Senate.

Biden spoke Tuesday night from the White House barely an hour after returning from a five-day trip to Asia that was bracketed by mass shootings in the U.S. He pleaded for action to address gun violence after years of failure — and bitterly blamed firearm manufacturers and their supporters for blocking legislation in Washington.

Activists planned the vigil, along with a rally at the governor’s residence in St. Paul, for the two-year anniversary of Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, which ignited protests in Minneapolis and around the world as bystander video quickly spread.

An 18-year-old gunman opened fire Tuesday at a Texas elementary school, killing at least 14 children and a teacher and wounding others, Gov. Greg Abbott said, and the gunman was dead.

As part of “Chicago Tonight’s” special series “Turning Pain into Purpose,” we speak with Maria Trujillo, a resident of Little Village. Trujillo lost two sons in a year and is still searching for answers.