United States: Teenager who won award for essay on gun violence killed by stray bullet

Milwaukee: 13-year old Sandra Parks who won an award for her essay on gun violence in her neighbourhood of Milwaukee was killed by a stray bullet here on Monday. The teenager was killed after a bullet was fired outside and was aimed at no one in particular pierced through her bedroom window and hit her in the chest, reported CNN citing police officials.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said, “Sandra Parks … went into her bedroom. She never came out alive. Tragically, her death was caused by someone who just decided they were going to shoot bullets into her house, and she’s dead. A 13-year-old, on Thanksgiving week, on a school night, in her bedroom, and she died.”

“Little children are victims of senseless gun violence. 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,” she wrote in the award-winning essay “Our Truth”. Two men were charged in the case. Sandra’s mother Bernice Parks stated that her daughter was against violence. “My baby was not violent. My baby did not like violence,” she said.