Editorial: A grieving mother’s question for Chicago. ‘How is it possible that a little girl dies in broad daylight?’

For children in Chicago’s Little Village, a predominantly Mexican neighborhood on the Southwest Side, there’s no buffer between a moment of family joy and the sudden terror of bullets flying. Broad daylight gives no cover. Neither does Halloween trick or treating on a street full of costumed children, nor the gentle comfort of a mother’s hand on a Saturday afternoon.

Melissa Ortega, 8, was holding her mother’s hand as they walked along 26th Street in Little Village on Jan. 22. She had just asked her mom, Aracelia Leanos, for a hamburger. “Of course,” Leanos answered.

Then the crack of gunfire. Melissa and her mother began running. Suddenly, Leanos no longer felt the grip of Melissa’s hand. Her daughter was on the ground in a puddle of blood, felled by a fatal gunshot wound to the head.