'We need help,' mayor says after 4 killed in 2nd mass shooting in Chicago in 4 days

At least four people were killed and four others were injured Tuesday morning in the second mass shooting in Chicago in four days, police said.

A barrage of gunfire erupted just before 6 a.m. in the city's Englewood neighborhood, police said. The shooting followed a disturbance at a home, police said.

Several people were gathering inside when the shooting started, police said.

ABC station WLS-TV in Chicago confirmed through police sources that four people were pronounced dead at the scene. The names and ages of those killed were not immediately released.

Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown said at a news conference that three women are among the dead.

Four people suffered critical injuries in the shooting, including a 25-year-old man and a 41-year-old man who were both shot in the back of the head, police told WLS.

A woman and a 23-year-old man, who was shot in the back, were also in critical condition at University of Chicago Hospital, police said.

Some of the victims were taken to hospitals in private cars. A 2-year-old girl, who was in the house at the time of the shooting, was rushed to St. Bernard Hospital for observation but did not appear to be injured, authorities said.

The motive and details of what prompted the shooting are under investigation. No arrests have been made.

Brown said police were initially called to the neighborhood around 2 a.m. to investigate a report of shots fired near the home where the quadruple homicide occurred. He said when police were called back to the area at 5:45 a.m. they discovered multiple shooting victims.

Brown said police have responded to the same home for "disturbances" in the past but declined to give specifics on what the previous calls were about.

The police superintendent said a high-capacity ammunition magazine was recovered at the home following Tuesday's mass shooting.

"We must acknowledge this for what it is -- a tragedy that has ripped apart families and inflicted intense trauma on several individuals," Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at a news conference on Tuesday. "It tells us that we still have much work to do."

Lightfoot said officials at the White House reached out to her Tuesday morning to offer support.

"What we will likely learn as the details become clearer is that illegal guns continue to plague us," Lightfoot added. "Gun violence continues to have a deep and painful history in our city. Unfortunately, Chicago is not unique. We are part of a club of cities for which no one wants to belong, cities with mass shootings."

She pleaded for help from the federal government, saying, "This is a national problem."

"Cities individually cannot tackle this problem. We just cannot. In Chicago, we've done absolutely everything possible and we need help from the federal government," Lightfoot said. "When guns are so porous that they can come across our borders as we see every single day in Chicago, we know that we have to have a multi-jurisdictional, national solution to this horrible plague of gun violence."

The incident follows a mass shooting on Saturday in Chicago that left a woman dead and nine adults injured.

Chicago police officials said investigators are searching for two suspects who walked up to a crowd gathered on the sidewalk in a business district in Chicago's Chatham neighborhood and opened fire just after 2 a.m. on Saturday. The nine adults who suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the shooting ranged in age from 23 to 46, according to police.

The Cook County Medical Examiner identified Kimfier Miles, 29, as the woman killed in Saturday's mass shooting.