BRIDGEPORT, Ill. (CNN/WGN) -- The number of homicides in Chicago has reached 400 so far this year. That's up 25-percent from the same time last year.
Relatives behind crime scene tape are locked in a grief-filled embrace as detectives comb for clues and workers wash blood from the sidewalk.
This scene playing out in Bridgeport, Illinois. More than 400 homicides in Chicago in 2012, with still three month a to go.
Jose Escobar, 25, was shot and killed after a fight at a fast-food stand at 35th and Morgan. His friend was left paralyzed.
Escobar's family says he was a gang member, but he was trying to get out. Tio Hardiman says, "Right now in Chicago the epidemic of violence is spreading all over the place."
Tio Hardiman is with Ceasefire. Just in the last few months, under a grant from the city, the group started working with police in two neighborhoods
Hardiman says slowing the city's homicide rate will take changes in policing strategies and community strategies. No one he says is off the hook.
On the south side, members of sweet holy spirit church were on a prayer walk prompted by recent shootings, including the murder of Dejuan Jackson, 17.
And police say the gunman is just 14-years-old. Bishop Larry Trotter says, "Many are wearing red, symbolic of the bloodshed, but also symbolic of the blood of Jesus that covers us. And, so, we want to pray on every corner that the crime will cease in the city."
As you heard one man say, experts predict the city's homicide rate will hit 500 before the end of the year.