By Annysa Johnson, Mary Spicuzza & Mike Johnson @ Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Nov. 20

Two years before her death, by bullets that shattered her bedroom window Monday night, 13-year-old Sandra Parks wrote about the violence that plagues many Milwaukee neighborhoods.  

"We are in a state of chaos," Sandra wrote as a sixth-grader in an award-winning essay commemorating the life of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "In the city in which I live, I hear and see examples of chaos almost every day. Little children are victims of senseless gun violence," she wrote. "Many people have lost faith in America and its ability to be a living example of Dr. King's dream!"

Sandra, an eighth-grader at Keefe Avenue School, was shot about 8 p.m. Monday in the bedroom of her home in the 2700 block of North 13th Street. On Tuesday, police said a 26-year-old Milwaukee man has been arrested as a "person of interest" as a result of a tip. By late afternoon, Milwaukee police had a second man, a 27-year-old, in custody for questioning. Police did not indicate a motive.

Sandra is at least the fifth Milwaukee child fatally shot inside a home in the last four years by gunfire that erupted outside. Two others were caught in crossfire — one on a school playground, the other in his own yard [....]