The 9-year-old girl killed in a shooting spree in Pine Hills, Florida, was remembered by her family on Thursday as an “extremely smart” and funny little girl who was an “amazing gymnast” who one day could have competed as far as the Olympics.
T’yonna Major, 9, was fatally shot on Wednesday after a gunman accused of shooting three people walked into a nearby home and shot the girl and her mother, authorities said.
T’yonna was “the apple of her parents’ eye, she was just a true joy to them,” Phyllis Turner, T’yonna’s maternal great-aunt, told NBC News.
“She was extremely smart. She was at the top of her class. She was an amazing gymnast,” Turner said.
Turner added that T’yonna’s gymnastics coach wanted to “really take her under her wing” and nurture her talent because she believed the girl “had the ability not only to excel and go to the Olympics,” but also to compete in gymnastics in college one day.
“She was a perfectionist. She didn’t like second and third place,” Turner said of her great niece.
“She just believed in excelling in everything she did,” Turner said.
T’yonna was also a “funny little girl” who “brought so much joy and laughter to everybody,” she said.
Turner said T’yonna’s parents are “absolutely devastated” at the loss of their daughter who had such a bright future ahead of her.
Tokiyo Major, the girl’s father, wrote in a GoFundMe post for the family that T’yonna was “a light to everyone that knew her. She was everything to us.”
“Senseless violence has taken the life of my little girl,” he wrote.
Turner said that the girl’s mother, Brandi Major, was shot in the arm but was released home from the hospital late Wednesday. She said that while Brandi was physically stable, emotionally, the entire family has been devastated and crying from one moment to the next.
The principal of Pine Hills Elementary School, where T’yonna went to school, said in a message to the school community…
Read the full article here
