She had only lived in her northwest Atlanta apartment a few months. Chandra Kemp had moved from a different Atlanta neighborhood to what she thought was a safer place, a neighbor said.
But as she stood in her kitchen making dinner, a bullet flew through a window and struck the 49-year-old in the back. Kemp died 11 days later on Jan. 10, becoming the city’s third homicide of the year.
“Miss Chan,” as neighbors called her, had health issues and had survived several heart attacks, said her neighbor, Kawanna Harris. Harris and her older children often checked on Kemp and made sure she was okay, sometimes helping her up the stairs to her apartment.
“Every day I checked up on her,” Harris told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We just made sure she was OK. I felt like it was my duty to be there for her.”
When Harris heard gunshots in December, she barricaded her children, terrified the shots would continue. Minutes later, she saw blue flashing lights and an officer knocked at her door.
“Can you please check my neighbor?” Harris recalls asking. “We’re okay over here but can you please check on her?”
Before she died, Kemp was able to tell officers she had been shot. Investigators continue to search for suspects.
After Kemp’s death, Harris said, she and her five children moved from the West Lake Court complex and in with a friend in Riverdale.
“This community that we were in is already high in crime,” Harris said. “But to not feel safe in your own home is a whole different thing.”
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