Police officers heard the gunshots around 10:30 Friday night in the 1300 block of West 116th in the West Pullman neighborhood.
A budget analyst for Chicago Public Schools and a freelance make-up artist, 32-year-old Leonore Draper was committed to fighting gun violence on Chicago's city streets.
On the committee of an anti-violence non-profit called A Charitable Confection, Draper was coming home from a fundraiser Friday night when she was shot and killed while sitting in her car on Chicago's Far South Side.
"She was sitting in the car dropping her husband off who is handicapped," said neighbor Andrew Loss. "Some little girl was taking the man into the house. Then when the little girl came back out the lady, she was dead."
Police are still investigating the circumstances, but say it was after 10:30 Friday when they heard gunshots near the 1300 block of West 116th Street. After touring the area they found Draper with a gunshot wound to her arm. She was rushed to the hospital, where she later died.
"Leonore was a bright light," said friend Jocelyn Delk Adams. "She was one of my best friends. A friend I had had for 10 years. Someone everyone was pulled towards because of her personality. A bright light. Everyone that met her just loved her."
Delk Adams is Draper's former college roommate and the organizer of Friday night's fundraiser, which she says was raising money to support a teen run charity that fight's violence on the city's South Side.
"We need to stop this," Delk Adams said. "We're losing people that don't need to be lost, that have so many years left, that have so many dreams left to fulfill. There needs to be something done."
At this point investigators don't believe Draper was the intended target and say she may have been caught in the crossfire of what appears to have been a drive by shooting. No one is in custody as of yet.
