Bloody Memorial Day Weekend Leaves 4 Dead, Dozens Wounded in Chicago

— -- It has been a violent Memorial Day weekend in Chicago, and the holiday is not even over yet.

Weekend shootings across the city have left four people dead and nearly 50 wounded, the Chicago Tribune reported.

Official numbers won’t be released until Tuesday, a Chicago Police Department spokesman told ABC News today.

A 15-year-old girl, identified as Veronica Lopez, was reportedly the youngest victim, shot while riding in a vehicle with a 28-year-old man around 1:30 a.m. Saturday on Lake Shore Drive, according to the Tribune.

The Cook County medical examiner's office was closed Monday.

The police department said officers, in coordination with Illinois State Police, have been out in full force all weekend long.

The planning began last week.

"Beginning now, several thousand Chicago police will be deployed in uniform ... to make sure everybody has a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend," Chicago police superintendent Eddie Johnson said in a news conference Thursday. "Our message to those who wish to victimize neighborhoods with violence is that your actions will not be tolerated..."

As officials braced for a deadly weekend and, by extension, what’s projected to be one of the deadliest years ever, the department noted in its quarterly crime report that there were 133 reported homicides from January to March this year, compared with 77 last year at the same time, and 59 in 2014.

"You have some families here raised into violence," a Chicago resident who requested anonymity told ABC News today, adding that the troubling crime rate is partly "the result of not so good policing as far as finding the guns and where they come from."

Tio Hardimanm, former executive director of Chicago-based anti-violence organization Ceasefire Illinois, offered another analysis.

"You have guys who are getting into it about any and everything," Hardiman told ABC News last month after a similarly deadly weekend shooting spree, "and some young guys are trying to build a body count so that they can show everybody in their neighborhood that they are the toughest guy over there."

Police superintendent Johnson was handpicked for the job last month by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who said the 20-year Chicago police veteran was "everything the city needs."

Fifty-five people were shot, 12 fatally, in Memorial Day weekend shootings in 2015.