Slain 15-year-old girl was ‘trying to come home’ shortly before she was strangled, mother says
A 15-year-old girl found strangled in a South Shore apartment had called her mother asking to be picked up shortly before she died, her mother said Thursday.
Yahanna Clark said she believed her daughter Amarise Parker, 15, had been dating a man who lived in the apartment building in the 7200 block of South Phillips Avenue, where she was found dead just before 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
Clark’s voice broke as she described her daughter to reporters on the block where police found Amarise unresponsive on Tuesday.
“She was a lovely soul, everybody loved her,” Clark said, sobbing. She asked anyone with information about her death to come forward and help solve the case.
The Cook County medical examiner found that Parker had died from a combination of asphyxiation and strangulation, and her death was ruled a homicide.
According to a Chicago police missing person alert, a 15-year-old girl with the same name was reported missing Aug. 31 after she was last seen in the area of 10900 S. Wood St. But she returned home shortly after, police said.
Clark said Thursday that Amarise had been missing on and off throughout the fall. But on Dec. 11, Amarise called Clark and told her where she was.
“She had reached out to me and was trying to come home,” Clark said. “She had strength enough to give the actual address, and I picked her up on a corner right there.”
Clark picked her daughter up that day from Phillips Avenue, but she later left again, she said. Amarise was found dead the next day.
“She was dating this young man that knew she was underage,” Clark said. “When I came (to get Amarise), they opened the gate and I saw him in there.”
Activist Andrew Holmes said he and his colleagues were working with the families of two other women who were recently found dead elsewhere in the Chicago area.
“These are somebody’s daughter, somebody’s granddaughter and somebody’s niece,” he said. “And neither one of these women deserve to lose their life at the hands of someone else.”
As of Thursday evening, police didn’t respond to Clark’s comments, but said no arrests had been made in the slaying.
