Kanari Gentry Bowers, 12, was playing basketball with friends at an elementary school playground when shots from a car rang out around 7:15 p.m. Saturday. When the shooting began, all the children on the playground scattered.
About five minutes later, Kanari’s family received a phone call from one of the girl’s friends asking if the 12-year-old made it home alright. She hadn’t. A few minutes later the family received another call informing them the girl had been shot.
Kanari was rushed to Stroger Hospital. According to family members, Kanari was shot in the neck and the bullet shattered her spine. Doctors told the family if she survives it is likely she will never walk again. On three occasions, paramedics and doctors at the hospital could not detect a heartbeat but she was revived. Kanari remains on life support.
A little more than half an hour after Kanari was shot, Takiya Holmes, 11, was in a parked car with her mother, grandmother and three-year-old brother. Her mother had just put the car in park in front of the dry cleaner where she works when the family heard shots. Takiya’s mother yelled for everyone to get down. After the shooting stopped, the woman asked if everyone was alright. Everyone answered except Takiya. She had been shot in the head.
Takiya was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital and like Kanari, she is on life support and remains in critical condition.
According to police, neither child was the intended target of the shootings.
Both families are trying to make sense of what happened. Andrew Holmes, a community activist and Takiya’s uncle, offered $1,000 of his own money for information leading to the arrest of the shooter. He said the family was at the young girl’s bedside and they are “trying to keep her here with us.” Holmes plans to reach out to Kanari’s family.
Kanari’s uncle, Djuan Bowers, just wants the shootings to stop. He said, “Instead of a gun, pick up a pencil or a book. Talk it out.”
Both families are asking for prayers and are asking the shooters to turn themselves in. As of Sunday evening, police had made no arrests in either case.
Needless to say, Kanari and Takiya were not the only ones shot in Chicago over the weekend. Twenty-three others were shot in shootings that resulted in five deaths. And 313 people have been shot in Chicago so far this year. Ten of those who were shot were children under the age of 14 years.
During 2016, there were a record number of 3,550 shootings in Chicago and 762 murders. As with the shootings of Kanari and Takiya, most of these shootings were gang-related.
