Neighbors coming to grips with news of slain Addison girl
The teddy bears were stacked all over the memorial outside of Mya Lyons' Addison apartment complex.
On the grassy floor, drips of pink wax remain from two candles that had burned through the night. It was Mya's favorite color.
Several poster boards hung on the fence with tributes written by children in the neighborhood to the 9-year-old girl who was stabbed to death this week and left for dead in an alley on Chicago's South Side.
"It's just hard to believe how somebody can do that," said Timothy Kester, a neighbor whose own 9-year-old daughter, Arianna, was best friends with Mya. "The whole community's hurting."
Neighbors in both the apartment complex where Mya lived and classmates at her Glendale Heights school still were coming to grips Wednesday with news of Mya's murder and finding ways to pay tribute to the little girl.
Counselors were available to students attending summer school at G. Stanley Hall Elementary School, where Mya had just finished the third grade.
"She was a hardworking little girl who really wanted to learn and was proud of her accomplishments," said Samia Hefferan, principal of the school. "I learned about it while watching the news and at first I was hoping there were two Mya Lyons."
School officials had spent the last two days contacting teachers and school staff about Mya's death.
Hefferan said she planned to personally call and offer condolences to the family, who Wednesday asked for help from the community in finding Mya's killer.
Chicago police detectives went door-to-door on 84th Street and Gilbert Court looking for information that might help their investigation. The girl's body was found late Monday night after her father had discovered she was missing from his house.
Mya's mother, Ericka Barnes, tearfully clutched a picture of her daughter and mustered the strength to make a short statement. Through sobs, Barnes said she didn't know how she was going to tell her son that his sister was not coming home.
Barnes pleaded for help from the public, that "if you know anything, please come forth. We need this man prosecuted severely."
Barnes and a few other relatives and friends wore pink shirts in honor of little Mya whose favorite color was "Barbie doll pink," according to her aunt, Martha Lyons.
"Whoever the killer is," Lyons said, "he took our angel."
On the edge of the desolate alley that starts at the end of the dead-end street where Mya Lyons' dad lives, a memorial grows. It includes poster boards with dozens of well-wishes as well as stuffed animals.
Religious leaders and members of the Auburn-Gresham community marched around the neighborhood for a short time with Ericka Barnes as a gesture to plead for an end to the violence.
Meanwhile, Julia Williams, a resident of the South Side Chicago neighborhood, was in Addison Wednesday morning snapping photos of the memorial growing in front of the Addison girl's home. She said organizers were planning on using the images on T-shirts to remind others of the life that was taken away too soon.
"She didn't deserve this," Williams said. "Nobody deserves this."
•WBBM NewsRadio 780 contributed to this report.