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This 13-Year-Old Girl Spoke Out Against Gun Violence. Now She Was Killed By It.

Sandra Parks was once celebrated for her award-winning essay on gun violence.
This 13-Year-Old Girl Spoke Out Against Gun Violence. Now She Was Killed By It.
By Paula Rogo ·
A 13-year-old Wisconsin girl, once lauded for her award-winning essay on gun violence, was killed by the very thing she spoke out against. Sandra Park was killed Monday after someone fired a gun into her Milwaukee home. She was sitting at home among her family members. “Sandra did not deserve this,” her sister Tatiana Ingram told WISN 12. “Sandra was an amazing person. She was so bright. She was so beautiful and full of life.” In 2016, Parks wrote an essay, titled “Our Truth,” for a Martin Luther King Jr. essay contest. The essay ended up winning third-place honors, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported. “We need to rewrite our story so that faith and hope for a better tomorrow, is not only within us, but we believe it and we put into actions,” the essay read. On Tuesday, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett called the violence in his city “insanity.” “You’re never going to solve a fight with a gun,” he said. “You’re never going to settle the score with a gun. But you see it over and over and over again in this country.” Local police say that a 26-year-old male person of interest was taken in custody. Parks’ mother, Bernice Parks, said her daughter was “was not violent.” “My baby did not like violence,” Parks told the Journal Sentinel. “My baby “Everybody that she knew, everybody that came to her path, she made them happy.”
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