Hadiya Pendleton: 15-year-old performer at 2013 Inauguration shot to death

Hadiya Pendleton the 15-year-old performer who captured the hearts o thousands while performing that the 2013 Presidential Inauguration last week was shot and killed in Chicago on Tuesday, Jan. 29 according to MSN news reports.

Hadiya was hanging out with her volleyball team at Harsh Park after taking exams Tuesday afternoon. About a dozen teens had taken shelter under a canopy during a rainstorm when a boy or man jumped a fence in the park, ran toward them and opened fire around 2:20 p.m., police said.

Pendleton was wounded in the back and a 16-year-old boy also a student at King was shot in the leg, police said. The attacker got into an auto and fled, police said. No arrests have been reported.

“As usual, the bad guy aims, but he never hits the other bad guy. He hits the one that hurts the most to lose,” the victim’s godfather, Damon Stewart, 36, who is a police officer, told the Chicago Sun-Times.

“I changed her diapers, I played with her growing up. My heart is broken.”

Pendleton was a sophomore at selective King College Prep High School, Pendleton had traveled to Washington to perform with the school marching band at inaugural events.

“It was the highlight of her young 15-year-old life,” Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said Wednesday at a Senate hearing on gun violence. Just a matter of days after the happiest day of her life, she’s gone.”

“She was an honor student all her life,” Wilks said. “Honestly, she was a walking angel. She never once gave her mom any problems ever.”

Today many of her classmates have changed their Twitter handles to honor her and decried the violence that had claimed an innocent life.

“You are more than loved and missed,” one wrote. “Your laugh smile and silly happy personality has made my day more times than I can remember. Nobody deserves this, especially not you."

Twitter has been the home to many social network users today who feel the need to pay their condolences to the family of Hadiya Pendleton, and share their thoughts about the tragic loss of this exceptional young lady.

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