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Now, family and friends gathered to remember the life of Tiera Franklin.
Franklin just buried her mother in April and her father was killed when she was only 5 years old. Now, her family is planning her funeral after she was shot and killed.
“They tell you they’re going out to the store, you expect them to come back home,” said Franklin’s aunt, Juanita Flowers. “So it’s tragic.
A sense of regret is fueling this family’s pain as Flowers said she was too late Friday picking up her niece before the 17-year-old was shot and killed.
“I feel like if I would’ve been here, maybe an hour, 45 minutes earlier, she would’ve been in the car with me. She wouldn’t have been at the location where it happened,” Flowers said.
Chopper 7 HD was above the scene that afternoon where police say the girl was shot in her torso near a fast food parking lot in the 2500-block of South Kolin in the city’s Little Village neighborhood.
Loved ones said she was with other family members when she was shot. They rushed her to the hospital, where she passed away.
“I was at home waiting on them to come back,” said Larhonda Sanderson, another aunt of the teen. “They never came back.”
The family said the teen was going into her senior year, with dreams of becoming a lawyer.
“Looking forward to graduating next year from Curie High School, looking forward to prom,” Flowers said.
Police said an unknown male offender on a bicycle pulled out a gun and shot her.
The motive is still unclear.
“We just lost her mother in April. We’re not even nowhere near heard from that,” said Krystina Ross, a family friend.
The smiles of the mother and daughter duo are forever stitched together in a quilt, while their deaths leave behind a pain much too hard to fix.
“I just wish she was still here. I wish this would have never happened,” Sanderson said.
Police said a person of interest was taken in for questioning. At this time, no charges have been filed.
