[green-label]Claim:[/green-label] Three-hundred and eighteen people were shot and killed on Halloween in Chicago, and President Obama subsequently declared a state of emergency in the city.
[dot-false]FALSE[/dot-false]
[green-label]Example:[/green-label][green-small][Collected via e-mail, November 2015][/green-small]
318 shootings and 109 killed in Chicago Halloween night?
[green-label]Origins:[/green-label] In a 1 November 2015 article titled "318 People Shot in Chicago on Halloween, Obama Declares State of Emergency," the web site Celebtricity reported that:
More than 300 people were shot and 97 people were killed in shootings throughout the city this Halloween night in Chicago of 2015 in what many are calling the “HALLOWEEN PURGE”That’s an increase in shootings and gun deaths compared to Halloween of 2014, when 134 people were wounded and 36 were slain in shootings.
This October , 446 people in total were slain in Chicago, with 137 dying from gunshot wounds.
The story was demonstrably false, and Celebtricity's (hard to find) disclaimer identifies it as a fake news site whose content is for "entertainment" only:
Celebtricity.com is the most notorious urban satirical entertainment website in the world with the most shocking headlines to keep its visitors in a state of disbelief.
Previous Celebtricity news hoaxes included stories about sex dolls being marketed for pedophiles, a claim NBA star Michael Jordan was indifferent to violence sparked by a line of shoes bearing his name, a tall tale about a Wendy's worker who tainted a customer's food with bodily fluids, and a yarn about a couple purportedly arrested for selling real estate on the moon.
[green-label]Last updated:[/green-label] 2 November 2015
[green-label]Originally published:[/green-label] 2 November 2015