A 37-year-old mother was fatally shot at a family gathering Friday in Chicago's Morgan Park neighborhood, just two days before Mother’s Day.
Summer Moore was at a family event around 8 p.m. in the 11400 block of South Aberdeen Street to help send her cousin off to prom. The teens had just left the home and the family was relaxing outside when shots rang out.
“When we were cleaning up I looked down the street and it was lit up,” said Moore’s aunt Aretha Cummings. “We heard a big crash and shooting, everyone took off running. She was trying to help her aunt up and she fell right there on the side of my house.”
Moore, a single mother of three, suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the chest. She was transported to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where she was pronounced dead, police said.
“We are celebrating a prom,” said Cummings. “This is a real bad tragedy.”
Family members said the loss is especially painful as it took place on Mother’s Day weekend.
“It’s Mother’s Day,” said Cummings. “To have something like this happen to [her children] is so sad. It’s too much violence, too much.”
Moore is described by family members as happy, beautiful, and ambitious. She was even attending school to become a nurse.
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“I remember her as the happiest person you will ever meet,” said her cousin Johnathan Tanksley. “I’m going to miss her always.”
“When you say beautiful it's inside and out,” said cousin Kita Moore. “There ain’t no word that could express how beautiful she was. She’d give you her last breath.”
Family and friends are calling on the shooter or shooters to come forward, and are frightened by the amount of violence that has plagued the city.
"I know the code on the streets is no snitching, but she has kids," said Tanksley. "Turn yourself in."
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Moore's death is the second tragic death to strike the family during Mother's Day weekend. Tanksley said last year another cousin in the family was killed on Mother's Day.
For Cummings, the memory of Friday's shooting is unforgettable.
“This is where my niece got shot at, at the back of my house,” she said. “This is where she took her last breath. I have to come out of my house and look at this all the time and think of her.”
Police are conducting a homicide investigation, but no one is in custody for the shooting.
“When you start killing babies and women you know we are in our last days,” said Kita Moore. “What was the purpose? Who were you aiming at? It has to stop.”
Moore was among six others shot in gun violence across Chicago since Friday afternoon.
