‘Everybody loved Mya’: Family mourns 19-year-old killed in Birmingham shooting

By Carol Robinson

A 19-year-old woman shot to death inside her vehicle in Birmingham is being remembered as energetic, independent and, most of all, loved.

Mya Parker died early Sunday at UAB Hospital, not long after she and another young woman were injured in the shooting at 10th Street West and Graymont Avenue.

The killing stunned her close-knit family.

“I’ve always told people my children wouldn’t be a statistic,’’ said grieving mother Marla Hinson-Parker. “She wasn’t just the 56th homicide in Birmingham-she was way more than that.”

“So many people loved my baby,’’ Hinson-Parker said. “She was so pretty.”

Birmingham’s West Precinct officers were dispatched to the shooting at 4:30 a.m. Both Parker and another woman in the vehicle with her were transported to UAB Hospital.

“The girl in the car with her called a mutual friend of Mya and they called me,’’ Hinson-Parker said.

“When I got the call, all they said was that she had been transported to UAB,’’ she said. “When I got there, I knew by the way they reacted when I came in.”

Parker had been out with a man she had been dating – for such a short period of time her parents didn’t even know him – when family says they got into an argument.

“They were just out celebrating Memorial Day weekend, just riding around and seeing what’s going on the city,’’ Hinson-Parker said.

Then they got into an argument.

“She had put him out the car,’’ she said. “He just walked up to the car and shot her.”

“The girl that was in the car with her said she told him, ‘You shot us,’ and he said, ‘I don’t care’ and took off running,’’ Hinson-Parker said.

The second young woman was also shot but is OK. A man in the vehicle was not injured.

Birmingham police have not yet announced any arrests, but Parker’s family said he is in custody.

Parker was a graduate of Minor High School, though she spent the majority of high school in Gardendale.

After graduate, she worked several jobs, including at Applebee’s in Five Points West.

She had just landed at new job with environmental services at UAB and was set to start orientation on Friday.

“She wanted to work to have her own money, but she was spoiled,’’ her mother said. “There’s a 13-year age gap between her and the next sibling so everybody doted on Mya.”

“She was very independent, and she wanted to make her own way,’’ Hinson-Parker said. “She wanted to do it herself. She’d grind. She’s always been like that.”

Parker was also looking forward to turning 20 in just a couple of weeks.

“Oh, did she have plans. Did we all have plans,’’ Hinson-Parker said. “She had a week’s worth of plans.”

Hinson-Parker said she and her husband, Ray Parker, had prayed to have another child and eventually Parker came into the world.

Parker was the youngest of four siblings.

“She was wanted. We prayed for her,’’ Hinson-Parker said. “My children are very close. They did just about everything together.”

“She was our baby,’’’ she said.

Hinson-Parker is a social worker who works in hospice.

“I’ve talked to families about death and grief so it’s not like I don’t know the stages of grief but when it’s your own child…it’s so senseless, so unnecessary,’’ she said. “You don’t make sense of it.”

This post was originally published on this site