body,td,th { font-family: Arial; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; }
Last weekend was Memorial Day in the United States, and in Chicago, the holiday saw 12 people killed across the city, one of them a 69-year-old Belizean nurse practitioner and mother of 5.
Gale Stephens was heading to comfort family at a cousin's funeral when she was caught in a crossfire near a gas station.
An article from the Chicago Sun-Times reported Stephens's death saying quote: "When officers arrived at the scene they found three people who had been shot while standing at the fuel station. All were taken to hospitals with injuries that were not life-threatening.
Then someone alerted officers to Stephen's car. She was found unresponsive with a gunshot wound to her side. She was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead" End quote.
Stephens's daughters are devastated telling news outlets this weekend, quote::The fact that she died alone in that car is crushing,":My mom was asthmatic, so I can imagine when that bullet hit her chest.... She couldn't breathe (and) she was alone."
Stephens was set to return to Belize this summer for a month-long trip with a cousin. But she pushed it back so she could attend the graduation ceremony of two grandchildren the first week of June.
The 69-year-old nurse practitioner who spent her later years caring for the elderly in their last days was among at least 12 people killed across that city over the holiday weekend.
