The schoolgirl is the latest face on the ever-increasing homicide toll in the president's hometown. She was killed in a Chicago park as she talked with friends by a gunman who apparently was not even aiming at her.
Chicago police said Hadiya Pendleton, who performed in a marching band at this month's inauguration, was in a park about a 2km from Obama's home in a South Side neighborhood yesterday when a man opened fire on the group. Hadiya was shot in the back as she tried to escape.
The city's 42nd slaying is part of Chicago's bloodiest January in more than a decade, following on the heels of 2012, which ended with more than 500 homicides for the first time since 2008.
It also comes at a time when Obama, spurred by the Connecticut elementary school massacre in December, is actively pushing for tougher gun laws, though he faces ardent opposition from the National Rifle Association and its allies in Congress.
Hadiya's father, Nathaniel Pendleton, spoke today at a Chicago police news conference, which was held in the same park where his daughter died.
"He took the light of my life," Pendleton said. He then spoke directly to the killer: "Look at yourself, just know that you took a bright person, an innocent person, a nonviolent person." Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy consoled him, the girl's mother and 10-year-old brother.
Hadiya was a bright kid who was killed just as she was "wondering about which lofty goal she wanted to achieve," her godfather, Damon Stewart, told The Associated Press. Hadiya had been a majorette with the King College Prep band.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the president and the first lady's "thoughts and prayers are with" the teen's family, adding: "And as the president has said, we will never be able to eradicate every act of evil in this country, but if we can save any one child's life, we have an obligation to try when it comes to the scourge of gun violence."
In Chicago, gangs routinely and often indiscriminately open fire. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and McCarthy are pushing for tougher local, state and national gun laws and longer prison sentences for offenders.
About three blocks from Hadiya's school, she and a group of 10-12 young people, including members of her volleyball team, had taken refuge under a canopy at a park to avoid the rain Tuesday afternoon.
A man climbed a fence behind the park, ran at the group and started shooting, and then jumped back over the fence and into a white Nissan. The group scattered, but Hadiya was shot once in the back and a teenage boy was shot in the leg.
Police said Hadiya had no arrest record and there was no indication she was a member of a gang or was the gunman's target. In fact, McCarthy said there are no indications that anyone in the group was gang-affiliated.
He said the police suspect that the gunman may be a member of a gang that considers the park its turf and that he mistook somebody in the group as someone from an encroaching rival gang.
McCarthy vowed to put a police officer at the park "24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year" if that is what it takes to show the gang that the park belongs to no one but the community.
Comments by both Stewart and the girl's father echo the message that city officials have long said: Gun violence is not confined to street corners in dangerous neighborhoods. Obama's neighborhood, Kenwood, is just north of the University of Chicago and the Museum of Science and Industry.
"Her parents had done everything right and she was doing everything right," he said. Stewart, who was 12 when his own brother was shot and killed, said his family and Pendleton's family were so close that his own children saw the 15-year-old as an older sister.
"The worst thing in the world was when yesterday I had to sit there and tell my children that their sister is gone," he said.
heraldsun.com.au 31 Jan 2013
There can be no denial that the loss of any life through a 'senseless' killing is devastating not just to the family but to an entire community, or even a nation.
Certain events can be staged or used as a catalyst to support a hidden government agenda.
The first call to total government control of the masses is to disarm them. Once this is achieved (dictatorial) laws can be put through without any resistance, and the government can sleep easily that it will not be harmed.
In Australia, the catalyst was the Port Arthur massacre, where the knee jerk reaction of the government was to disarm the nation, under whatever pretext seen fit at the time.
Criminal gangs and organizations, including outlaw biker communities DID NOT hand in their weapons, only law abiding citizens did.
Not one single gun related crime has been committed in Australia with a registered weapon since 1954.
One of the guns used in the Port Aurthur massacre was with a gun confiscated by Victoria Police, from across the Tasman sea.
In the United States the gun lobby is approximately 80 million strong, which makes the corrupt politicians and corporations uneasy.
An event that uses the emotions of the uneducated cattle masses is used to push through a hidden government agenda.
In this case the killing of not the President's daughter, but rather a singer for the President is used as the emotional catalyst to disarm the nation.
A 'perfect' scenario for one of the world's largest slave nations.
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