TUCSON, Ariz. — In winter of 2006, Lindsey Parker attended a party with her friends after work. She asked her mother Debora Parker to baby sit her 8-month-old daughter.
Hours after, Debora reached out to her daughter to see how she was doing. Debora said she got not reply back and started to worry.
"Even as an adult, she was always the child that responded back to me, always," Parker said.
Debora said she had a weird feeling in her all stomach all night, but went to bed anyway. She woke up at 6 a.m. to her door bell ringing and found two police officers, not in uniform, standing at her door.
"They said your daughter has been shot," Parker said. "And then they said she didn't survive her injures. At that moment, a sound left my mouth that I didn't even know I could make. All I could say was, 'Lindsey is dead; Lindsey is dead,' and I kept screaming it."
Thirteen years ago, Parker said her daughter went to a party with some friends, which she said ended in a drive by shooting.
"And Lindsey happened to be at that spot, at that moment, she got caught in the cross fire," Parker said. "Imagine how difficult it was for me to call into work that day, not to call in sick for my daughter, but to call in dead for my daughter."
She said Lindsey left behind her nine month old daughter at the time.
"Her daughter never got to celebrate a Christmas with her mom, never got to have a birthday with her mom," Parker said.
Parker said through her families pain, she wants Lindsey's story to spread awareness about gun violence, so that non other person ever has to feel a painful statistic.
"Right at the core family, were affected everyday," Parker said. "We wake up, and we think about her. The whole that's left in my heart is just unfillable."
