Jose Colon would have dropped his 18-year-old daughter Frances off to Roberto Clemente High School Monday morning, but instead he was tying balloons to the flagpole in her memory.
"This gun violence, you guys got to work it out," Colon said. "This is outrageous."
Frances Colon was shot and killed Friday in the city's Humboldt Park neighborhood. Her mother says she had stopped at a corner store to buy some chips and a pop when she got caught in a crossfire of bullets.
"She was going to be a lawyer. She wanted to be a lawyer, there was no doubt about that, she was going to be a lawyer," said " said mom Dorothy Payton. "The ones that always want to do something with their lives are the ones who get hit by the bullets."
Frances Colon was preparing to go to college next year and had previously been selected as a student of the month. Her mother says she has no plans to forgive her daughter's killer.
"They don't want nothing in life. We got kids out here who do want something. You think because of our color we don't want anything? Yes we do," Payton said. "We want something; our kids have a future, they see a future."
Frances Colon was killed hours after she saw President Barack Obama's helicopter fly by after he gave his gun violence speech in Hyde Park.
On Saturday, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called to offer his condolences to the Frances's family.
Students at Roberto Clemente are struggling with the third student death this year from gun violence.
"I think it's, like, tragic, you know, about the news about Barack Obama trying to stop the violence, but yet we have three kids from the same school that just got killed," said student Shaquita Mitchell. "They weren't in gangs; they weren't bad students, are all good students. And it just ended."
"The violence and the gun violence, it's not gonna end, and I know that. But it needs to end," said student Thanya Hidalgo.
Colon was one of two CPS students killed this weekend. The second is 17-year-old Oscar Marquez. A junior at Marine Math and Science Academy, Marquez was leaving the parking lot of a Little Village McDonald's with two cousins when their car was shot at. Police say they believe the shooting was a case of mistaken identity.
The deaths are just the latest in what is already shaping up to be a tough year for Chicago's children. Of the 51 people killed in the city since January 1, 10 have been 18 or younger.
