Back in 2013, 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton was shot in the back by 18-year-old Micheail Ward, who, along with 20-year-old Kenneth Williams, told police Hadiyah was not the intended target. Ward and Williams said they’d mistaken the group she was standing with for rival gang members. Hadiyah was killed soon after performing at President Obama’s second inauguration — even our forever First Lady Michelle Obama attended the late teen’s funeral.
Now, as Roc Nation deepens its political activism through its Team Roc leg, the entertainment agency has released a PSA dedicated to Hadiyah and narrated by Hadiyah’s mom Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton.
“Hadiyah is an amazing spirit. She’s my first born, she was the first grandbaby… the first niece. ‘Hadiyah’ means ‘a gift from God.’ She’s just an absolute joy. She’s a great listener, she’s a great and awesome friend. She came on the planet as a very caring person,” Cowley-Pendleton said in the PSA. She tells viewers we’ve never met anyone funnier than her daughter, who she says was making big decisions and accomplished a ton as a kid. “We lost all her children, her children’s children. We lost generations. In junior high she had a whole PSA… ‘Don’t be a part of gangs,'” she added. “We’ve got to make us right again as a community and people.
Visit HadiyahsPromise.org to help make a change in regard to gun violence. May beautiful Hadiyah Pendleton rest in peace… her loved ones remain in our prayers.
