*Two years after Sandra Parks, 13, wrote an award-winning essay about the “senseless gun violence” in her hometown of Milwaukee and elsewhere, she became another tragic victim Monday night while sitting in her home with family members.
“Little children are victims of senseless gun violence,” she wrote. ” … I sit back and I have to escape from what I see and hear every day. When I do; I come to the same conclusion … we are in a state of chaos.”
The stray bullet fired from outside her home shattered Sandra’s bedroom window as she watched television, CNN affiliate WISN reported.
“She took it like a soldier,” her sister, Tatiana Ingram said. “She just walked in the room and said, ‘Mama, I’m shot’ … The bullet wasn’t even for her.”
OTHER NEWS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED: Snoop Dogg Brought to Tears at His Play ‘Redemption of a Dogg’ (EUR Review)
Sandra Parks, 13, wrote this essay about gun violence and its effects on children like her. This week, she was killed by a stray bullet while she was in her bedroom.
WE NEED GUN REFORM NOW!
RETWEET THIS! pic.twitter.com/IMeVPd46B0
— StanceGrounded (@_SJPeace_) November 22, 2018
Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett described “the insanity” of gun violence that’s crippled the nation.
“Sandra Parks … went into her bedroom. She never came out alive,” Barrett said at a news conference. “Tragically, her death was caused by someone who just decided they were going to shoot bullets into her house and she’s dead.”
Prosecutors charged two men in the shooting death Wednesday. It’s unclear if the home was targeted.
Parks, an eighth-grader at Keefe Avenue School, wrote the essay in 2016 when she was in sixth grade. Her moving words won third place in the contest.
“Our first truth is that we must start caring about each other,” she wrote. “We need to be empathetic and try to walk in each other’s shoes. … We shall overcome, when we love ourselves and the people around us. Then, we become our brothers keeper.”
Sandra told Wisconsin Public Radio last year that she wanted to write about gun violence because of the constant coverage on shootings.
“All you hear about is somebody dying or somebody getting shot and people do not just think about whose father or son or granddaughter or grandson who it was that was just killed,” she said.
Her mother, Bernice Parks, said her daughter constantly spoke out against violence.
“My baby was not violent. My baby did not like violence,” she said.
We Publish News 24/7. Don’t Miss A Story. Click HERE to SUBSCRIBE to Our Newsletter Now!
