First lady to attend funeral of slain Chicago teen

First lady Michelle Obama, White House senior advisor Valerie Jarrett and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are scheduled to travel to Chicago Saturday to attend the funeral of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who was shot to death last week after performing in President Obama’s inauguration celebration.

Aisha Truss-Miller, her family and an organization called the Black Youth Project had started a petition lobbying President Obama to come to Chicago himself to make a speech on gun violence. Ms. Truss-Miller wrote that the news of Ms. Pendleton’s death prompted memories of her cousin, Leonard Truss, who was shot and killed by an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle near where Ms. Pendleton was killed.

“President Obama rightly went to [Newtown, Conn.] to comfort the families who lost children in that horrific tragedy, and now it is time he come home to Chicago and comfort the over 500 families who have lost loved ones to gun violence in the past year,” the petition, which has garnered more than 3,000 signatures, reads in part.

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