In court, pals of 6-year-old Aliyah go to see 'the bad guys' who killed her
Aliyah was 6 when she was shot dead in March 2012 in a hail of gunfire while sitting on her mother's lap outside their home in Chicago's Little Village neighborhood. The two were waiting for a ride to a birthday party on a warm spring day, Aliyah dressed up in a black skirt and talking while her mother ran her fingers through her daughter's curly hair.
To try to help them come to grips with the violent loss, friends and family brought 10 of Aliyah's friends to the final day of the trial for two men charged in her death. The kids' feet dangling from wooden benches in the courtroom as lawyers made impassioned closing arguments that brought some jurors close to tears.
Not much later, the youngsters - joined by more than 20 family members all wearing purple shirts, Aliyah's favorite color - watched silently as two Latin King gang members were convicted of murder. Prosecutors said the two - Luis Hernandez, now 19, and Juan Barraza, 21 - had targeted Aliyah's home because a rival Two-Six gang member lived there.
While Barraza waited in the driver's seat of a gray pickup, Hernandez stepped into the street and fired at least four shots toward the porch, prosecutors said, but only the sociable little girl sometimes known as "Care Bear" was hit.
In court, such young spectators are an unusual sight. The Leighton Criminal Court Building has signs prohibiting children in the courtrooms hanging from some entrances. But the parents said Tuesday they wanted their children there to support Aliyah and her family, to help answer questions their kids still had about her death and to show how the "bad guys" would be held responsible.
It was an emotional day even for prosecutors. In her closing remarks, Assistant State's Attorney Yolanda Lippert briefly appeared to fight back tears, as did several jurors, when she listed a few questions that can never be answered about Aliyah's life.
"Will she get a part in the middle school play? Is Princess Elsa her favorite or Princess Anna?" she asked in a reference to the characters from the hit Disney movie "Frozen."
When prosecutors displayed the photo of a beaming Aliyah on a large TV screen, Yaya began to cry, but she later told her family, "My eye was itching."
Yaya, who lived in the same house with Aliyah, sometimes asks her mother to take her back to the home they've since left in the 3100 block of South Springfield Avenue, telling her she still sees Aliyah on the swings.
"She says, 'I want to go there, mom. I want to go back because she's there waiting for me," said Marilyn Vaca, 25.
During the entire two-hour closing arguments, Yaya clutched a note she had written in pencil and folded over and over again until it was small enough to fit in her hand.
"I miss her so much I wish this didn't happen to her," Yaya had written. "She was like my sister but she just had a diffrent mom and dad ... I miss her alot. I love you Aliyah. from Yaya."
One row from Yaya, Aliyah's younger sister, Caitlin, 5, sat holding a Care Bears coloring book, a box of crayons and a stuffed tiger given to her Tuesday by a mother who lost her adult son to Chicago's gun violence.
When spectators were asked to stand as the jury came into the sixth-floor courtroom, Caitlin's head didn't clear the wooden row in front of her.
Diana Aguilar, mother to both Aliyah and Caitlin, held her daughter tight in her arms and cried as prosecutors described how Aliyah had been killed.
It was the first time Aguilar had heard that one bullet went through her daughter's right arm, breaking it before entering the child's tiny chest.
In an interview a day earlier, Aguilar said she at first thought her daughter had been shot only in the arm until the energetic little girl who loved to dance remained motionless when her mother begged her to get up.
"I was holding her, I was holding her really tight, just hoping nothing would happen, trying to protect her. But I failed because I'm alive and she's not," she said, crying.
Caitlin, then just 2, was also on the front porch when her sister was shot. Aguilar said she pushed her toddler to safety as the bullets began flying, but a sadness still haunts her youngest daughter. Aguilar has discovered the little girl crying, whispering to herself, "Aliyah, when are you coming back?"
"To this day she remembers everything," Aguilar said. "She'll throw herself on the ground and say,
'Remember when Aliyah was like this?' "
"She asks, 'When are we going to pick up Aliyah from the hospital? Does she have a big Band-Aid on her arm?' It just breaks my heart."
On Tuesday, Caitlin got her first look at the "bad people" who killed her sister. Wearing a yellow-flower hairband and a ponytail, she looked up when a prosecutor said her name during closing arguments and when photos of the front of her old home were shown to jurors. But as the minutes dragged on, she left to go play with a friend in the hallway outside the courtroom, their laughter echoing off the stone walls.
She returned when the judge was giving legal instructions to the jury, diligently coloring a picture of Good Luck Bear as the judge explained Illinois law governing first-degree murder charges.
The verdicts brought a small amount of peace to Aguilar, who is happy her daughter's killers will never be able to hurt another child. But she says her daughter's death has broken her.
She sometimes struggles just to get out of her pajamas. She not only misses Aliyah but also feels guilty she survived the shooting.
"It's not fair," Aguilar said, crying. "I don't want (Aliyah) to think I'm OK. I just - I just need her to come back. That's all. If she could just come back I would try my best to keep her safe."
As Aguilar's three other children grow older, Aliyah remains frozen at age 6, the girl who loved "Scooby-Doo" cartoons and took on extra chores in order to save enough to buy a Hello Kitty blanket for her older sister.
Aguilar said friends still give her an extra goody bag when their children have birthday parties that would have included Aliyah. She takes the bags of candy to Aliyah's grave at Queen of Heaven Cemetery, along with coloring books, crayons and other things her daughter loved.
"When I want to talk to her ... all I see is a stone with her name and a picture. I can't hug her. ... It's not fair. I didn't ask for this and neither did she.
"I buried my 6-year-old daughter. There's more mothers burying their children. Why? What did she do wrong besides love life, love her family, love school and love her friends?"
When she was 6, Yaya wanted to be a fashion model wearing colorful clothes designed by Aliyah, who was so good with crayons, her mother said.
But that dream has changed. Yaya now wants to be a police officer, she told a reporter Tuesday in a soft voice outside the courtroom as her mother stood beside her.
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