Chicago is a city so wracked with deadly violence–it is in on a record-breaking pace for murders and shootings–that “Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is expected to announce his department will be adding 970 hires to the force,” according to CNN.
One of the more than 500 homicides so far this year was Parasha M. Beard, a pregnant 19-year-old woman who was shot to death in front of her mother’s home in South Chicago Sunday evening.
But, incredibly, her baby girl, who was not due until December, survived.
“Relatives said they have named the baby ‘Miracle,’” according to Chicago Tribune reporters Rosemary Regina Sobol and Elvia Malagon.
“Miracle, she’s a miracle baby, she’s doing good, she’s breathing on her own,” Sylvia Jones-King, Ms. Beard’s grandmother, told WBBM news.
“Thank God that her baby that she was pregnant with is surviving right now,” said her mother, Crystal Jones. “Thank you God, have mercy on me.”
Added Tyler Thomas, the child’s grandfather, “The baby is doing good,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
“Miracle’s miracle survival happened just two weeks after a similar story also took place on the southside of Chicago,” according to Ben Johnson. “Another baby survived after the mother, 23-year-old Crystal Meyers, was shot through the stomach while sitting on a porch on Labor Day.”
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Ms. Beard, already the mother of a 4-year-old daughter, was “very, very happy about being a new mom,” Andrew Holmes, a community activist working with the family, told the Tribune.
Fox News reported the circumstances
Parasha Beard was sitting in a car with a friend of hers in South Chicago Sunday when somebody approached and shot both of them, Fox 32 reported. Beard’s family said the gunman lived down the street and apparently got into some kind of argument with the woman and her friend beforehand.
Rushed to Northwestern Hospital, she was pronounced dead Sunday evening. Officer Kevin Quaid, a police spokesman, told Fox News that the man sitting in the car with Ms. Beard was also shot in the chest. At last report he was in critical condition.
LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.
