15-Year-Old Who Performed At Obama Inaugural Event Killed

A 15-year-old girl who had performed in President Barack Obama’s inauguration festivities is the latest face on the ever-increasing homicide toll in the president’s hometown, 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 2 kilometres from Obama’s home in a South Side neighbourhood Tuesday afternoon 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 Mr. 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 Wednesday at a Chicago police news conference, which was held in the same park where his daughter died.

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