A 13-year-old Milwaukee girl who won an award for an essay condemning gun violence was killed by a stray bullet that entered her bedroom this week.
Sandra Parks was watching TV when she was struck and killed, CNN affiliate WISN reported.
"She took it like a soldier," her sister, Tatiana Ingram, told the affiliate. "She just walked in the room and said, 'Mama, I'm shot' ... The bullet wasn't even for her."
Parks, in her essay, wrote about the "senseless gun violence" that's claimed children's lives.
"Sometimes, I sit back and I have to escape from what I see and hear every day. I put my headphones on and let the music take me away...When I do; I come to the same conclusion ... we are in a state of chaos," she wrote.
Parks, who was African-American, also wrote that "There is too much black on black crime ... that makes me feel depressed."
She said the solution to overcoming gun violence would be "caring about each other." "We need to be empathetic and try to walk in each other's shoes. We shall overcome when we eliminate the negative and nasty comments people make about each other," she wrote.
She also wrote that she, as a member of "the future generation" needed to be educated in order to effect change.
Two men were charged on Wednesday (local time) over Parks' shooting death , WISN reported.
Isaac Barnes, 26, and Untrell Oden, 27, were walking when Barnes began "shooting at an unknown target," according to the criminal complaint, WISN reported.
One of the shots entered Parks' bedroom window and fatally struck her in the chest.
Police later found Barnes hiding in the closet of a nearby home.
It's unclear why Barnes fired the shots.
Parks was an eighth grade student at Keefe Avenue. She had penned the award-winning essay two years earlier.
