http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013...shes-gone?lite
Another day in America ...
Too bad she wasn`t packing ... This would not have happened 
Another day in America ...
A 15-year-old Chicago girl gunned down a week after she performed during President Obama?s inaugural festivities was remembered Wednesday as a ?walking angel? ? the last person her family could imagine dying by a bullet.
Hadiya Pendleton was an honor student, a marching-band majorette, and a doting big sister who thought about becoming a journalist or a pharmacist or even getting into politics after she witnessed history in Washington last week.
The biggest trouble the insatiable reader ever gave her parents: running up their credit card buying books on Amazon.
?I couldn?t ask for a better child,? her mother, Cleo Cowley, said through tears at her Chicago home. ?She didn?t give me any hard time at all. She had a heart of gold.?
A sophomore at Chicago?s selective King College Prep High School, Pendleton was walking with fellow members of the volleyball team in a park Tuesday afternoon when the skies opened. They ducked under a canopy to get out of the rain, joining other teenagers.
At that moment, Chicago police say, a gunman came running down an alley behind the park, opened fire and then darted into a waiting vehicle and took off. No arrests have been made.
Pendleton was struck in the upper back, and a 16-year-old schoolmate was hit in the leg. They ran about a block before she collapsed on the street, police said. She died at the hospital.
When it happened, her mother was at work at the TransUnion credit company, in a meeting. Her cellphone rang and she saw it was one of her daughter?s friends and quickly answered.
?She was screaming on the phone that Hadiya?s been shot, she?s been shot, and I just didn?t understand,? said Cowley. ?I had to get someone to help me understand that my baby has been shot.?
The murder ? about a mile from Obama?s Chicago home ? quickly caught the attention of Washington during a day of debate over gun violence.
The White House called it a ?terrible tragedy,? and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the shooter a ?gangbanger? and a ?punk? who had stolen the dreams of a girl with a bright future.
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill, was emotional as he spoke about Pendleton?s inauguration activities during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on guns.
?Just a matter of days after the happiest day of her life, she?s gone,? he said.
Cowley said the trip to Washington ? an invitation to a band competition that was part of the inauguration festivities -- was ?everything? to her daughter.
?She was extremely excited about it, to go there and witness history and perform at the Capitol. She told me, ?Mom, I might think about getting involved in politics,?? she said.
For the moment, though, she was focused on traveling with the band to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and a planned educational trip to Dublin, Paris and London in March. ?She even thought about studying abroad,? her mother said.
...
Hadiya Pendleton was an honor student, a marching-band majorette, and a doting big sister who thought about becoming a journalist or a pharmacist or even getting into politics after she witnessed history in Washington last week.
The biggest trouble the insatiable reader ever gave her parents: running up their credit card buying books on Amazon.
?I couldn?t ask for a better child,? her mother, Cleo Cowley, said through tears at her Chicago home. ?She didn?t give me any hard time at all. She had a heart of gold.?
A sophomore at Chicago?s selective King College Prep High School, Pendleton was walking with fellow members of the volleyball team in a park Tuesday afternoon when the skies opened. They ducked under a canopy to get out of the rain, joining other teenagers.
At that moment, Chicago police say, a gunman came running down an alley behind the park, opened fire and then darted into a waiting vehicle and took off. No arrests have been made.
Pendleton was struck in the upper back, and a 16-year-old schoolmate was hit in the leg. They ran about a block before she collapsed on the street, police said. She died at the hospital.
When it happened, her mother was at work at the TransUnion credit company, in a meeting. Her cellphone rang and she saw it was one of her daughter?s friends and quickly answered.
?She was screaming on the phone that Hadiya?s been shot, she?s been shot, and I just didn?t understand,? said Cowley. ?I had to get someone to help me understand that my baby has been shot.?
The murder ? about a mile from Obama?s Chicago home ? quickly caught the attention of Washington during a day of debate over gun violence.
The White House called it a ?terrible tragedy,? and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the shooter a ?gangbanger? and a ?punk? who had stolen the dreams of a girl with a bright future.
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill, was emotional as he spoke about Pendleton?s inauguration activities during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on guns.
?Just a matter of days after the happiest day of her life, she?s gone,? he said.
Cowley said the trip to Washington ? an invitation to a band competition that was part of the inauguration festivities -- was ?everything? to her daughter.
?She was extremely excited about it, to go there and witness history and perform at the Capitol. She told me, ?Mom, I might think about getting involved in politics,?? she said.
For the moment, though, she was focused on traveling with the band to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and a planned educational trip to Dublin, Paris and London in March. ?She even thought about studying abroad,? her mother said.
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