It is thought that Hadiya Pendleton who performed at President Barack Obama’s inauguration with the King College Prep school band last week has was mistaken for a gang member, reports The Telegraph.
She was sheltering from the rain under a canopy with a group of other teenagers on Tuesday when the gunman leapt over a fence, opened fire and then jumped into a getaway car at 2:30pm. Two boys were also injured.
“As usual, the bad guy aims, but he never hits the other bad guy,” her godfather, Chicago police officer Damon Stewart said.”I changed her diapers, I played with her growing up. My heart is broken.”.
Chicago is in the grip of a surge of gang violence at the moment, with the city’s murder rate at 506 people in 2012. The city has already logged more than 40 murders so far this year.
A White House statement said that Mr Obama is praying for Hadiya’s family.”It’s a terrible tragedy any time a young person is struck down with so much of their life ahead of them, and we see it far too often,” spokesman Jay Carney said.”And as the president has said, we will never be able to eradicate every act of evil in this country, but we – but if we can save any one child’s life, we have an obligation to try when it comes to this scourge of gun violence.”,
Image via Getty shows police, community leaders and family members of Hadiya Pendleton gathering for an event near the shelter at a neighborhood park where Hadiya was killed on January 30, 2013
