An 11-year-old girl has died at Comer Children’s Hospital after being shot in the head by a stray bullet on Saturday night, a family member said Tuesday.
Takiya Holmes was sitting in a van in the 6500 block of South King Drive when she was struck by what police believe was a stray bullet.
“We are not doing too good,” Takiya’s cousin, anti-violence activist Andrew Holmes, said Tuesday morning. “We’re trying to cope and hold each other, comfort each other.”
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Takiya’s family filed out of Comer Children’s Hospital around noon, and addressed a throng of waiting reporters.
Takiya was pronounced dead by doctors about four hours earlier, but remained on life support so that her organs could be used for transplants, said Patsy Holmes, Takiya’s grandmother. Holmes said she hoped a relative with a kidney problem would be a donor match.
“We want (her) to get one of Takiya’s kidneys. … we love you and hopefully it will be a match so you can get out of some of the trauma you’re in.”
Andrew Holmes called on anyone with information about the shooting to come forward to police.
“The damage has been done,” he said. “We just want them to step up, turn someone in. The key to this is the community. We got to stop pointing fingers … because the killers came out of that community.”
Takiya’s mother, Nakeeia Williams, said Sunday she heard gunshots and told everyone in the car to get down.
“When it was over, she asked, ‘Is everybody OK? Is everybody OK?’ And Takiya didn’t respond,” the girl’s grandmother, Patsy Holmes, said Sunday morning outside Comer Children’s Hospital.
Takiya was sitting next to her 3-year-old brother in the back seat — her mother and aunt were in the front seats — when gunfire erupted about 7:40 p.m. in the 6500 block of South King Drive in the Parkway Gardens neighborhood.
Williams was parked outside a dry cleaning store, where she worked, and planned to exchange cars with a co-worker when someone fired shots, Patsy Holmes said.
Takiya was one of two girls shot within 25 minutes of each other, about four miles apart. Kanari Gentry-Bowers was still clinging to life at Stroger Hospital after being shot while playing at Henderson Elementary School in the West Englewood neighborhood.
GalleryA tearful Rochetta Tyler, Kanari’s aunt, was on the way to the hospital to visit the girl Tuesday morning.
“Kanari is still fighting for her life,” said Tyler, who’d also heard the news about Takiya’s passing.
Patsy Holmes said she had prayed for Kanari.
“Hopefully, she can pull through,” she said.
Contributing: Mitch Dudek
