Melody Ross's father, Vannaret, throws himself onto his daughter's coffin as pallbearers look on. Racked by pain and disbelief, Melody's family and friends struggle to make sense of the sixteen year old being killed by a stray bullet fired by a gangmember. "Every kid our age -we don't ever think we're going to die," said Dylan Vassberg ,who shared a chemistry class with Melody. "We never think that. We think we're going to college and we're going to have a long life and die of old age. Not die because someone decided to shoot a gun." © Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times

Returning to school after a months absence from being shot, Erica Miranda, 10, gets a bear hug from one of her teachers as students look on and giggle. "We're glad to have you back, Erica," her classmates said. "We prayed for you." © Barbara Davidson

Tori Rowles (center) at the burial service for Melody Ross. Tori and Melody were inseparable and had planned to go to college together. Tori was next to Melody when she was hit by a stray bullet after a football game. © Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times

In the days after Melody's death, there were candlelight vigils as well as bake sales to help raise money for the funeral. In Melody's honor, songs and raps were written, filmed and sent over the Internet. Thousands of mourners poured their emotions out on a memorial Web page, communicating with her as if she were reading their words. Black shirts were worn in her honor in Long Beach. And in Washington. And Pennsylvania. And Canada. It wasn't that she was a star student, an elite athlete or otherwise destined for greatness. She was a normal kid -- friendly, embracing, kind, close to her family. It was just that her life wasn't long enough. It was, however, long enough to matter. © Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times

Rose Smith was shot on her front doorstep in a South Los Angeles housing project, caught in the crossfire of rival gangs. With two young children and a baby on the way, when the bullets tore through her arms, broke her jaw, and left her paralysed from the waist down, she thought God, please don't let me die right now. "It's not my time to go". In the ensuing months she was in constant pain, spending most of her days in bed. She named her baby "Miracle." Now three years old, Miracle lifts her mother's leg as Rose slides into her wheelchair. "We both really are a miracle" says Rose "because we both survived that shooting." The family had stem cells from Miracle's umbilical cord preserved in hopes that doctors may one day use them to help restore feeling in Rose's spine. © Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times

Albert, left, and Maddox play near where their brother was killed. "He always talks about the guys that did it," Glee said of Albert. "And he is always talking about the police. When are the police going to catch him? Why haven't they caught him?. And we have to explain that to him the best we know how." Despite falling crime rates, a study showed that more than half of the children in the most violent neighborhoods in Los Angeles suffer from a condition akin to post-traumatic stress disorder. © Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times

Pastor Wyman Jones, of Sweet Hill Baptist Church in South Los Angeles, carries a wooden cross through the Nickerson Gardens public housing complex to protest gang violence. Police have said the recent violence was linked to a civil war of sorts within the Bounty Hunters, for years the dominant gang in Nickerson Gardens, apparently over drug sales. © Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times