Melissa de la Garza, 18, had just parked her car outside her Chicago home on Saturday night after shopping for Halloween celebrations.
She did not get out of the vehicle alive.
According to the testimony of relatives, the Hispanic teenager was fatally shot in front of her home, in the West Lawn neighborhood, in the southwest of the city.
Crime scene footage shows bullet holes around the driver's window.
[Murders soared more than ever in 2020. Pandemic stress may be one of the causes]
De la Garza, who preferred to be called by her nickname, Azul, had three brothers and had just graduated from high school,
where she was one of the first young women to join the wrestling team.
She was also a budding artist who enjoyed painting and had been admitted to The Art Institute of Chicago.
Melissa de la Garza, Chicago Public Schools.
The teenager was one of at least five people killed in that Illinois city this weekend.
Police
had not announced any arrests in connection with the case until the end of Monday
, and it is unknown what motivated the attack.
His family, in the absence of answers, asked the community for help on Sunday, in an appearance before the media in which they also mourned the loss and described the crime with nonsense.
"To the cowards: surrender, because you will not be able to sleep", sentenced his grandmother, Clara de la Garza. "You will not find the peace that we have lost by losing Melissa."
added.
Her father, José de la Garza, described her as a teenager who "had no problems."
"She was a child of the house, a child of the family," she declared through tears.
The United States suffers the largest annual increase in the number of murders in half a century
Sept.
27, 202100: 32
According to family testimonies, it was her own father who found the young woman dead inside the vehicle, just after hearing shots in the neighborhood.
Isabel De La Garza, Melissa's sister, said she had spoken to her only 30 minutes before she was killed.
“The last words I had with my sister were through a Facetime call [Apple's phone app]," he explained. "I was very happy.
He had just bought a costume for Halloween, "he added.
[FBI asks for help finding 43 missing children. Three of them are Hispanic]
In May, when the number of shooting victims in Chicago increased 34% over the same period last year, Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised that her Administration would direct resources to the highest crime areas in an effort to reduce the violence.
"We owe it to all of our residents, in every neighborhood, to restore peace and vitality," Lightfoot declared at a news conference.
According to data from the Gun Violence Archive, gun violence has been responsible for the deaths of
more than 15,000 people in the United States since early 2021.