ST. LOUIS _ For the fourth time in five days, a child has died after being shot in St. Louis.
The latest victim is Myiesha Cannon, a 16-year-old girl fatally shot early Wednesday morning. Myiesha was shot in the head about 1:25 a.m. Wednesday in city's Greater Ville neighborhood. She died at the scene.
"Who killed my daughter and why?" her mother, Latrice Cannon, told a reporter on her front porch Wednesday. "There are so many stories."
Homicide detectives are handling the investigation, which they are calling a "suspicious death," not a homicide. A department spokesman said he had no other details.
Mayor Lyda Krewson called the deaths "outrageous."
"It makes me sick," she said.
St. Louis Police Chief John Hayden said on Wednesday that the department is looking for "nests" of criminal activity. The children killed over the week, he said, were unintended targets of drug-related or personal disputes. He said the city is moving the department's mobile patrol into affected neighborhoods, increasing the visibility of officers and squad cars, and asking for help from social service organizations to calm potential retaliation. Krewson said the department is also partnering with federal agencies.
On Wednesday, Cannon said her daughter was next door with some boys. Her mother said she hadn't realized Myiesha had left the house.
Cannon said she heard the gunshot and ran outside. A man in the yard, she said, shouted: "They killed her!"
Cannon found her daughter dead on a couch at the neighbor's home.
"I saw my daughter with her eyes wide open, shot in the head," said Cannon, 38. "We don't know who shot her. We just know she didn't do this herself. She wouldn't even hold a gun. She was scared of guns."
Myiesha was a student at Sumner High School; she would have been in 10th grade in the fall. She lived at the home on Lexington with her mother, sister, brother, aunt, uncle and three cousins.
Cannon said her daughter wanted to work with pets when she grew up.
Myiesha's maternal grandmother, Antonia Cannon, 58, said she will always remember Myiesha's big smile and big personality. Myiesha's sister, Tyniesha Brown, 13, said of her big sister: "She liked to talk. She liked to play. She could be mean when she wanted to be mean, but not mean to us."
As Myiesha's family spoke to a reporter outside their home, Tyniesha kept glancing toward the street where three young men had gathered. Tyniesha said she was nervous and wondered if someone in that group knew what really happened to her sister.
Police asked anyone with information to call CrimeStoppers at 866-371-8477.
Myiesha is the second girl to die under suspicious circumstances since Monday night. Charnija Keys, 11, died after being shot in the head about 11:40 p.m. Monday at the home she shared with her mother and older sister in the Carr Square neighborhood.
Police also are calling Charnija's case a "suspicious death." Homicide detectives and child abuse investigators are handling the case.
Myiesha and Charnija were among four children fatally shot in St. Louis since Saturday night.
On Saturday night, a 16-year-old boy was shot and killed just northwest of Fairground Park, St. Louis police said. Jashon Johnson was shot several times, police said. Police arrived just after 10:30 p.m. to Red Bud and Margaretta avenues. Jashon was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The shooting took place in the O'Fallon neighborhood.
On Sunday night, 3-year-old Kennedi Powell was shot to death in a drive-by shooting in the city's Mount Pleasant neighborhood. Kennedi and her neighborhood friends had just swarmed her father's car for a piece of pizza Sunday evening when a white car drove past, and someone inside it opened fire. One round struck Kennedi in the chest, and another hit her 6-year-old neighbor, Oriel Smith. Oriel was critically injured, police say.
Violent crimes, including homicides, rapes and assaults, are up in the Greater Ville neighborhood, according to crime statistics. Between December and May, the neighborhood had 76 violent crimes, including four homicides. In the same six-month period the previous year, there were 69 violent crimes, but eight of those were homicides.
