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© ABC NewsHeaven Sutton, 7, died Wednesday after being struck in the back by a stray bullet as she reportedly raced for cover from a stand where she was selling candy in front of her Chicago home.
A 7-year-old girl has become the latest symbol of surging violence in the Windy City.

Heaven Sutton died Wednesday after being struck in the back by a stray bullet as she reportedly raced for cover from a stand where she was selling candy in front of her Chicago home.

Sutton was the fourth person killed in her neighborhood on the city's west side this week and the 20th person under age 17 killed by gunfire in Chicago this year, the Chicago Tribune reported. Overall, the city has had more than 250 homicides this year, a nearly 40 percent rise since 2011.

The brother of Heaven Sutton, 7, who died Wednesday after being struck in the back by a stray bullet as she reportedly raced for cover from a stand where she was selling candy in front of her Chicago home.

"She loved to sing, dance and crack jokes," Ashake Banks, Sutton's mother, told ABC News. "And she always smiled."

Banks told ABC she hoped gangs would stay away from the candy stand, which Banks set up to give kids a safe place to gather. "But they really didn't even care...They killed my baby," she added.


The area around Sutton's home has witnessed tensions between two street gangs, the Four Corner Hustlers and the Mafia Insane Vice Lords, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Police reportedly were seeking a person of interest in connection with the shooting, which prompted an angry rebuke from Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

"This is not about crime. This is about values," Emanuel said at an event Thursday, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. "You're a member of a gang coming to get lemonade and another gang member is driving by. Where were you raised and who raised you? Stay away from the kids!"

Emanuel has made battling gangs a priority. On Wednesday he commended the Chicago City Council for de-criminalizing the possession of small amounts of marijuana -- a move city officials hope will free police officers to focus their time and efforts on crime prevention. On Tuesday the city announced a pilot program that will send about 40 anti-violence workers to mediate conflicts in two murder-prone neighborhoods.

Though violence in Chicago remains well off its historical peak in the early 1990s, when the city recorded about 900 homicides a year, this is the first year Chicago has reached the 250-murder mark in the first half of the year since 2003, according to an analysis by RedEye Chicago.