On the evening of April 20, 2023, in Hartford, Connecticut, 12-year-old SeCret Pierce was a passenger in a parked car when she was struck by gunfire during a drive-by shooting. A seventh-grader at Milner Middle School, she was hit in the head, taken to a nearby hospital in critical condition, and died the next morning. Police described her as an innocent bystander caught in the crossfire.

Authorities say the shooters were in a speeding vehicle and appeared to target three males standing on the sidewalk; those three, ages 16, 18, and 23, were wounded and expected to survive. Surveillance video captured the incident but was described as grainy. Hartford police arrested two of the wounded: 18-year-old Jeremy Francis was charged with unlawful discharge of a firearm, carrying a pistol without a permit, risk of injury to a minor, and first-degree reckless endangerment after police allege he returned fire at the fleeing vehicle, and a 16-year-old was arrested for violating house arrest. The shooters who fired the initial rounds that killed SeCret have not been publicly identified or apprehended.

SeCret’s father, Shane Oliver, had been killed by gunfire nearly 11 years earlier when she was two. Her death prompted vigils and calls for an end to gun violence in Hartford. If anyone witnessed the shooting or has information about the vehicle or its occupants, please share what is known with investigators.