Girl who performed for Barack Obama shot dead A 15-year-old girl who performed at President Barack Obama's inauguration last week has been shot dead in Chicago. Source Fox News A 15-YEAR-OLD girl who performed at President Barack Obama's inauguration last week has been shot dead in Chicago by a gunman who opened fire on a group of kids hanging out in a park, police say. The schoolgirl is the latest face on the ever-increasing homicide toll in the president's hometown. She was killed in a Chicago park as she talked with friends by a gunman who apparently was not even aiming at her. Chicago police said Hadiya Pendleton, who performed in a marching band at this month's inauguration, was in a park about a 2km from Obama's home in a South Side neighborhood yesterday when a man opened fire on the group. Hadiya was shot in the back as she tried to escape. The city's 42nd slaying is part of Chicago's bloodiest January in more than a decade, following on the heels of 2012, which ended with more than 500 homicides for the first time since 2008. It also comes at a time when Obama, spurred by the Connecticut elementary school massacre in December, is actively pushing for tougher gun laws, though he faces ardent opposition from the National Rifle Association and its allies in Congress. Hadiya's father, Nathaniel Pendleton, spoke today at a Chicago police news conference, which was held in the same park where his daughter died. Cleopatra Pendelton during a news conference seeking help from the public in solving the murder of daughter Hadiya. Picture: AP "He took the light of my life," Pendleton said. He then spoke directly to the killer: "Look at yourself, just know that you took a bright person, an innocent person, a nonviolent person." Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy consoled him, the girl's mother and 10-year-old brother. Hadiya was a bright kid who was killed just as she was "wondering about which lofty goal she wanted to achieve," her godfather, Damon Stewart, told The Associated Press. Hadiya had been a majorette with the King College Prep band. A family photo shows Hadiya Pendleton, 15, center, posing with her dance troop at President Barack Obama's inauguration. White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the president and the first lady's "thoughts and prayers are with" the teen's family, adding: "And as the president has said, we will never be able to eradicate every act of evil in this country, but if we can save any one child's life, we have an obligation to try when it comes to the scourge of gun violence." In Chicago, gangs routinely and often indiscriminately open fire. Mayor Rahm Emanuel and McCarthy are pushing for tougher local, state and national gun laws and longer prison sentences for offenders. About three blocks from Hadiya's school, she and a group of 10-12 young people, including members of her volleyball team, had taken refuge under a canopy at a park to avoid the rain Tuesday afternoon. A man climbed a fence behind the park, ran at the group and started shooting, and then jumped back over the fence and into a white Nissan. The group scattered, but Hadiya was shot once in the back and a teenage boy was shot in the leg. Police said Hadiya had no arrest record and there was no indication she was a member of a gang or was the gunman's target. In fact, McCarthy said there are no indications that anyone in the group was gang-affiliated. Nathaniel Pendelton, center, hugs his son Nathaniel Jr. and his wife Cleopatra during a news conference with Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy seeking help from the public in solving the murder of Pendelton's daughter Hadiya. Picture: Charles Rex Arbogast He said the police suspect that the gunman may be a member of a gang that considers the park its turf and that he mistook somebody in the group as someone from an encroaching rival gang. McCarthy vowed to put a police officer at the park "24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year" if that is what it takes to show the gang that the park belongs to no one but the community. Comments by both Stewart and the girl's father echo the message that city officials have long said: Gun violence is not confined to street corners in dangerous neighborhoods. Obama's neighborhood, Kenwood, is just north of the University of Chicago and the Museum of Science and Industry. "Her parents had done everything right and she was doing everything right," he said. Stewart, who was 12 when his own brother was shot and killed, said his family and Pendleton's family were so close that his own children saw the 15-year-old as an older sister. "The worst thing in the world was when yesterday I had to sit there and tell my children that their sister is gone," he said.