An Atlanta youngster was shot and killed at a birthday party attended by hundreds of fellow high school students.
Police discovered Laila Renee Harris, 15, died on Saturday at 11 a.m. at the entrance to a building on the corner of Citizens Parkway and Jonesboro Road in the 1000 block.
After getting a report of gunfire, police arrived at the complex. Police believe the shooter may have been expelled from the party and later returned with a partner to open fire.
No other people were hurt. Police spokeswoman Julia Isaac of Clayton stated, “I suppose while others were dispersing and running, she got caught in the crossfire.”
Isaac said one student should know the shooter’s identity, but he didn’t name any suspects. On Sunday, a GoFundMe page was established to help Harris’s mother.
Kailyn Crawford, a protest organizer, stated that Harris was simply being a teenager when she was killed.
“She was brutally killed while attending a birthday party simply doing what any fifteen-year-old likes to do, trying to have fun, and now we’ve lost her to a terrible act of violence,” Crawford wrote.
In total, more than $4,000 was donated to cover the costs of returning Harris’s body to Saint Louis. The police are looking to the public for assistance in naming possible suspects.
Isaac condemned automobile break-ins by youth as a means by which young people acquire guns and urged parents to keep a watch on their children.
The only thing she asked was that parents keep tabs on their children.
Our office receives numerous reports of missing children and teenagers who turn up hours or even days later each week.
It’s a never-ending cycle because most auto thieves are juveniles. If they spot firearms inside the vehicles, they will break a window to steal one and use it in an additional act of criminality.
It all comes full circle, then. Another person was killed on Saturday night, but this time it wasn’t during a party in a high school.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that one person was murdered and five others were injured after a gunman opened fire on the 17th Street bridge in Atlantic Station.
After a group had been led off the property by police, shots were fired. The victims, according to the police, were between the ages of 15 and 21 inclusive.