President Obama has no plans to attend the funeral for a 15-year-old Chicago girl who was shot to death a week after marching in the president’s inaugural parade.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said the president and first lady’s “thoughts and prayers are with the family” of Hadiya Pendleton, but there are no plans for Mr. Obama to travel to Chicago for her funeral.
An online petition is urging Mr. Obama to attend the funeral for Hadiya, who was shot Tuesday in a park by an unknown gunman as she stood with a group of teens seeking shelter from the rain.
A week before the tragedy, the honor student and majorette had performed with her high school band in Washington at Mr. Obama’s second inauguration.
Mr. Carney said the girl’s death is another example of the need for gun control.
“If we can save any one child’s life, we have an obligation to try when it comes to this scourge of gun violence,” he said. “The president has more than once, when he talks about gun violence in America, referred not just to the horror of Newtown or Aurora or Virginia Tech or Oak Creek but to shootings on the corner in Chicago or other parts of the country, and this is just another example of the problem that we need to deal with.”
