(File / FOX 13)
SEATTLE - Wednesday marks six years since a 16-year-old girl from Puyallup was shot to death in a car in front of Borracchini’s Bakery in Seattle while going to pick up a birthday cake with her mom.
No arrest has been made.
Kahlani Shabazz was on track to graduate early. She had dreams of becoming a lawyer. And on May 3, 2017, she was looking forward to prom dress shopping with her mother. All of that was taken away in an instant.
Kahlani and her mother were pulling into the bakery when gunshots rang out. A gunman in a silver four-door sedan pulled up next to her Dodge Charger and opened fire.
"I heard a pop, pop, pop, pop, pop," Sye said.
Kahlani was shot in the head.
"Once I understood what was happening and saw her it was an out-of-body experience. Having to do CPR and looking at her... she looked at me, and it was just blank. She took three breaths and it was just over. I was powerless. That was it," says Kahlani’s mother, Elizabeth "Nonnie" Sye.
Six years later, Nonnie says every day without an arrest is an emotional struggle.
"Kahlani is my only daughter. She and my children are my only reason for living, but I’m not able to do that. My heart is shattered," said Nonnie in a message to Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz, asking for justice for Kahlani.
The pain of that moment is indescribable. Elizabeth says her life was taken, too.
"I’m empty. I’m alone. Holidays come up, and she’s usually in the kitchen cooking with me, she’s usually shopping with me. And those things are gone now. So I don’t have a life... it’s nothing now," she says.
To anyone out there with information, Kahlani’s mother wants them to picture this: "Imagine that being your child, shot in the head, and there’s nothing you can do."
It’s a harrowing thought she hopes will help someone find it in their heart to do the right thing.
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