OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) — A mother whose 13-year-old daughter was shot and killed by another teenager at a sleepover last week says she doesn’t understand why the teen who shot her daughter was ever allowed access to a gun in the first place.
Friends and family laid 13-year-old A’moni Young to rest at a memorial service on Thursday.
Oklahoma City police say a 15-year-old boy shot and killed A’moni at a Northeast Oklahoma City home last Monday.
Since the shooting, a judge has sealed records on the 15-year-old suspect’s case — so not much else is known about him, or why he allegedly shot A’moni.
A’moni’s mom, Shanette Young, told News 4 that officers told her the boy shot A’moni in her back while she was walking away from him.
For Shanette Young, the task of letting go of her 13-year-old daughter’s life is not one she ever expected she’d face.
“I still can't believe it, it's been hard for me, real hard,” Young told News 4. “It hurts me. I just want to know why. I just want to know why. Why did he take her from us? She still had her whole life ahead of her.”
A’moni was Young’s first child, born in 2010.
“She was a big jokester, like, she was real goofy,” Young said. “I still feel like she's just a baby. Just literally in a blink of an eye, she grew up before my eyes.”
At 13, going on 14, A’moni already knew what she wanted to do with her life.
“She loved to draw and take pictures,” Young said. “She loved that type of stuff. She wanted to go to college and she wanted to do study photography for sure.”
But A’moni will never get to do that. Not after she went to that sleepover last Monday.
“I thought I was just trying to let her go, have some fun with her friend,” Young said. “It’s still hard to believe.”
Young knew the friend A’moni went to spend the night with. She had gone to sleepovers at their house in the past. She thought A’moni would be perfectly safe.
“Never in a million years, I would have thought that I would have been losing my baby there,” Young said.
The problem is, somehow, A’moni and her friend ended up at a different house. At that house, was a 15-year-old boy who somehow had a gun, and fired it.
Young got the phone call around 3:30 a.m.
“My sister called me… and was like ‘A’moni has been shot,’” Young said.
Young could see the police lights at a house a few streets over from her own.
“It happened just two blocks from [my house],” she said.
Young walked up to an officer. He told her — A’Moni had been pronounced dead.
“It was a a blur,” Young said. “It's been a blur since then. Like, I still can't believe it. It's been hard for me, real hard.”
A’moni would have turned 14 this past Saturday.
Instead of a party, her family held a vigil.
“She was only 13. I just don't get it,” Young said.
She doesn’t get — how a 15-year-old could have even gotten a gun in the first place.
“Where's these guns coming from? Where do they get it from,” she said.
It’s hard for her to let go.
“I will never get her back,” Young said. “I can cherish the memories that we have. I can look at pictures all day, but I can never hear her laugh. I can never see her get married or have her own children.”
And it’s even harder to make sense of something so senseless.
“I think that's what hurts me the most,” Young said. “Like, she was still, she was still a baby. She was only 13. It hurts. Like, I don't get it.”
