Tamera Mowry-Housley paid tribute to her late niece Alaina Housley on what would have been her 20th birthday.
Alaina was killed in the 2018 mass shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California.
“When I look at Aden, I see glimpses of you,” she wrote on Instagram. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you. You were such an angel on this earth, and now you are one in heaven. I miss you. Happy heavenly 20th birthday Lai Lai.”
On Nov. 7, 2018, 12 people, 28-year-old former Marine, Ian David Long, opened fire on the crowd who attended a college country night at the Thousand Oaks venue, before turning the gun on himself.
Two weeks after the shooting, Mowry-Housley used her national platform on daytime talk show, “The Real,” to speak out against gun violence.
“Our country — and it’s sad to say this, but you have to be living underneath a rock to not believe these words — our country is sick,” she said. “It’s diseased. It needs healing. It needs healing from within.”
Mowry-Housley returned from her work hiatus on the daytime talk show to discuss the loss of Alaina Housley, her niece through her marriage to former Fox News correspondent Adam Housley.
Alaina Housley, an 18-year-old freshman at Pepperdine University, was one of 12 people killed on Nov. 8 during a mass shooting inside the Borderline Bar and Grill.
“She was my niece from marriage, but she was my friend and my sister from my heart,” she said at the time. “It’s obvious that we need change when it comes to gun violence and I don’t care if I have to knock on the doors of the White House to do it.”
“We need to sit down and extend a hand instead of pointing fingers. I think the moment we focus on trying to find commonality instead of differences in the beginning, that’s where we can start with looking at human decency.
“When we start from there, that is when we can get the work done. That is what Alaina’s voice needs,” she added.
