To close to home

So Friday night around 10:30 I was at play practice and everything was good……no worries for me.

Unknown to me and the rest of the world my Mother and Step-Father were forced to their living room floor as a hail of bullets was being shot at and into my 16 year old cousin Juan in their front yard. He was fatally MURDERED from this brutal assault.

What more can I say …that has been said. “Stop the violence, increase the peace, save our kids”…..these words are said daily in our community- clearly no one is paying attention. All I know is my Mother stood over my cousin’s dead body with her Great Aunt and that is not normal and so wrong on many levels. Why are we accepting this? Why is it that we are ok with kids dying everyday? I can’t and I won’t accept this!!

Yes, I was on BAD GIRLS CLUB and I know what it may represents to the world but that show does not define me as a PERSON at all. Beyond that show I am an Educated Woman who is productive in the community with dreams and goals; who loves God and her family. I’m saddened by the death of my own family member but equally as upset about the other 150 plus people in the Chicago area that have been MURDERED this year along; in senseless crimes in CHCAGO.

As I watched the news Saturday night. I was in shock it was my family they were speaking to about my cousin. Juan Daniel's age 16 my cousin was being were counting as another dead kid in the streets of Chicago. It has hit too close to home for me again.....I don’t have the answers but I know something must be done.

RIP JUAN-D