Fifteen-year-old honor student Avondre Donel was sitting outside a friend's home on Mother's Day when he was cut down in a drive-by shooting.
Donel, an honors student, was, by all accounts, a good kid. His mother, Lisa Donel, kept him under close watch. He was in the church choir and was not allowed to travel more than five houses away from his home.
But on Mother's Day, Avondre was exactly five houses away at a friend's house. He was waiting on the porch as his friend got dressed, so they could shoot a few hoops before a planned holiday dinner. Out of nowhere, a single shot struck Avondre in the chest.
"She did everything she could to protect him. She didn't let him run the streets, and she made sure he didn't hang out with the wrong kind of kids," Avondre's godmother, Jackie Sullen, told the Detroit News. "This just shows you can make all the right decisions, and then it comes down to someone else making a bad decision that ruins your whole life."
No matter how closely we guard our kids, how strongly we discipline them and instill in them the right values, they have to step out in to the world, even if that world is only five houses away.