Krista Ramsey

kramsey@enquirer.com

Withrow eighth-grader Tyann Adkins, 14, was killed the day after attending the funeral of her schoolmate, Jayshawn Martin, also 14.

Had you met Tyann Adkins on the morning of March 30, you'd say she was like any other 14-year-old girl, her grandmother, Leatress Long, says.

Hooked on Facebook. Hated getting up for school. Adored her 1-year-old brother and 10-year-old twin sisters and fussed at them constantly. Helped herself to her grandmother's leftovers whenever she visited. Was rarely seen without a string of fake pearls. Knew how to wheedle rides home and other favors from a large extended family who doted on her. And had discovered the pleasure of doing her hair and getting her nails done.

Which is what she was about to do that Saturday morning in an Avondale apartment where kids in the neighborhood hung out.

Ten minutes earlier, she had called her mother, aunt and then grandmother to ask for a ride home. They were working or visiting Tyann's grandfather who was in the hospital, and told her to wait. Another relative had just dropped off money for the manicure.

Then her older half-sister, who had gone with Tyann, called her mother again. "They just shot Bugga," she said, using Tyann's childhood nickname.

By the time an ambulance arrived, the Withrow eighth-grader was dead.

Police say the 14-year-old girl was killed by a 14-year-old boy with a handgun. Some accounts say he walked into the room where she and other teenagers were sitting, pointed the gun at several of them and then it went off, striking Tyann in the chest. People scattered.

Police say another 14-year-old, known in the neighborhood as "Five," dialed 911, holding the cellphone with one hand and trying to stop the bleeding from Tyann's wound with the other. "He told me he kept telling her, 'Breath slow, Tyann,' " her grandmother said. But then Tyann gasped, tilted her head back and stopped breathing.

Less than 24 hours earlier, Tyann, who lived in Evanston, had attended the funeral of Jayshawn Martin, a schoolmate who was gunned down March 21 in Walnut Hills, about a mile away. He, too, was 14.

Long, who lives in Avondale, knows that many factors played into her eldest grandchild's death: an adolescent with a criminal record and a gun; the whereabouts of the apartment's owner; and her granddaughter in an apartment complex about which her family had concerns.

"But there are also a lot of people there who have lived there a long time and who can't afford to get out," she said. "It's low-income, but that don't make it a bad place and it don't make all the people who live there bad."

Tyann had the support of both her parents and a large extended family. She had rules about curfews and behavior. But like other teenagers in her neighborhood, she also had to navigate a complicated community. "I told her, 'if you see a fight, don't stand there and watch it.' Because they don't fight no more, they shoot," Long said. "And I told her, 'I don't want you walking past six o'clock when it gets dark.' And she'd say, 'Grandma, nobody's going to bother me.' "

Still, Tyann didn't stay out late, She called for a ride if it was getting dark. She was a regular kid, not a street kid, her grandmother says, who wrestled with her little sisters, loved the Cartoon Network and, when she visited, often curled up with her head on her grandmother's lap and sucked her thumb.

"She was a 14-year-old girl who was 14. She was lovable, she was sweet – there ain't a lot to say," her grandmother said. "You'd be thinking, if she was walking home alone late at night on some street ..." her grandmother's voice trails off. "But who would think that in the middle of the day a foolish kid playing with a gun would shoot your granddaughter?"

That was all the time Long had Wednesday to ponder a question for which she had no answer. She had to "keep checking things off my tablet."

Those things included helping her daughter choose her granddaughter's casket, write her obituary and pick out photos for a memorial video.

A niece was going to do Tyann's hair, she said. She'd be buried with a pearl necklace. And someone would do her nails.■