13-year-old girl who wrote award-winning essay on guns killed by stray bullet

"We are in a state of chaos."

A teenage girl who won an award for her essay on gun violence has died after being hit by a stray bullet. Thirteen-year-old Sandra Parks, from Milwaukee in the US state of Wisconsin, was sitting in her bedroom last Monday evening watching TV, reports The Washington Post. A bullet fired from a gun outside came through the wall of the home and hit her in the chest. Her mother, Bernice Parks, said that she was woken by the sound of gunshot and came in to find Sandra bleeding. "I looked at her. She didn’t cry. She wasn’t hollering," Ms Parks told TV station WITI. "She was just so peaceful... She didn’t deserve to leave this world like that.” Milwaukee's city mayor Tom Barrett described Sandra's death as "insanity". "Tragically, her death was caused by someone who just decided they were going to shoot bullets into her house, and she’s dead. "A 13-year-old, on Thanksgiving week, on a school night, in her bedroom, and she died." Two men have been arrested in connection with the death. Sandra had been outspoken about gun violence and the effect it had on her city. She won a prize for third place in the Dr Martin Luther King Jr writing contest in 2016 for an essay called Our Truth on the topic. "We are in a state of chaos," she wrote. "In a city in which I live, I hear and see examples of chaos almost everyday. "Little children are victims of senseless gun violence."