“What’s wrong with the world when these young minorities would choose to shoot up their own kind for fun?” LeShawn Cook lamented. “You think it’s a video game? These are real lives that are being lost!”
Tiana Ricks, 6, was killed in a shooting Saturday, Sept. 7, 2013, in Moreno Valley.
Family matriarch LeShawn Cook tried to escape gangs by moving from Compton to Moreno Valley, but now she suspects it was gang members who opened fire on a family gathering, killing a 6-year-old girl and wounding the child’s father.
The gunfire erupted at 9:38 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 7, in the 25200 block of Harker Lane, northwest of Lake Perris. Tiana Ricks and father Tyrell Ricks Jr., 26, were taken to the hospital, where Tiana died shortly after midnight.
No arrests have been made, and sheriff’s officials said Sunday that they did not have a suspect description or motive but that witnesses were still being interviewed.
The family said the intruders were two young black men who arrived in a dark-colored car. And Cook recalled detectives telling her family that the attack may have spilled over from gang activity walking-distance away at Iris Avenue and Perris Boulevard.
By Sunday afternoon, she had no tears left, she said, after struggling with grief and the seeming senselessness of gang violence.
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