The gun violence in Chicago continues to strike a little close to home for the Obama family. First, a young women named Hadiya Pendleton, who had just performed in the inaugural parade, was killed by stray gunfire in a Chicago park. That prompted Michelle to attend her funeral and invite the parents to sit with her at the State of the Union speech. It also influenced the president’s decision to travel to Chicago to deliver a speech on gun violence. One of the young women who attended that speech lost her older sister later that same day.
A Chicago teenager was shot and killed just hours after her sister sat on a stage behind Barack Obama, listening to the president appeal for tighter gun controls.
Janay McFarlane, 18, died from a gunshot would to the head following an incident shortly before midnight on Friday, Lake County coroner Thomas Rudd told the Chicago Sun-Times…
…Among those listening to the address at Hyde Park Career Academy was McFarlane’s 14-year-old sister. Just hours later she would be mourning the death of her sister.
McFarlane’s mother, Angela Blakely, said Sunday: “I really feel like somebody cut a part of my heart out.”
Blakely said the bullet that killed McFarlane was meant for a friend. McFarlane was supposed to graduate from an alternative school this spring, her mother said, and wanted to go into the culinary arts.
“I’m just really, truly just trying to process it, knowing that I’m not taking my baby home any more,” Blakely said.
Meanwhile, the violence continues unabated in Killadelphia.
