A 15-year-old teen who was shot and killed at a birthday party Saturday evening has a community saddened and a family demanding answers.
On Apr. 15, Amya Monserrat was an innocent bystander at Martha’s Boulevard Tavern, 3503 Southern Blvd in Youngstown, Ohio when an alteration escalated to gunfire between two groups who were feuding over an unknown cause.
According to police, the fight broke out shortly before 11pm when she was shot in the parking lot where the party took place. An ambulance crew performed first aid on her as she was rushed to a local hospital but she was pronounced dead upon arrival.
Monserrat was a well-known freshman cheerleader at Valley Christian School where both students, faculty and staff have been left stunned following news of her death.
“No parent is supposed to lose a child — especially at that age,” Valley Christian president Michael Pecchia told WKBN. “It’s going to be shocking. We’re grieving.”
School administrators closed the school Monday to allow students to grieve.
“Amya’s not going to be sitting at her desk tomorrow, and that’s tough for kids to process,” Pecchia said. “We’ve had discussions about her locker and her seat in the classroom.”
Police say they have identified suspects in connection to the victim’s murder and detectives have begun combing through hundreds of hours of video surveillance to piece together the incident as it unfolded. They further stated that the feud between the two groups had begun online and was boiling for weeks before the gunfire was exchanged Saturday.
Chief of Detectives Capt. Jason Simon also weighed in on Monserrat’s tragic passing, referring her to as a leader.
“If the community wants to remember her as a leader at her young age, the community needs to step up and lead and speak to the investigators,” Simon said.
Head of Schools Shelley Murray also released a statement Wednesday, stating, in part:
“As Christians, we know that God can, and does, bring good out of tragedy. We have already seen that from reports yesterday of students accepting Christ and rededicating their lives to Christ. In addition, our students have already begun to discuss ways that they can address the problem of youth and gun violence that affects our community. As we saw yesterday in the pleading our some of the local officials for change, our prayer is that Amya’s death will be forever memorialized as the start of real change in our community.”
