Taco Bell Memorial

Hope rings in the face of death.

This time last year my violin-player friend received a horrifying phone call. A close friend’s nineteen-year-old daughter had been brutally shot and killed. We were on our way to play a Christmas gig.

Those events took place December 10, 2022. I wrote about in an article entitled Life and Death at Christmas.

It was December 10 again. Déjà vu haunted me as we passed familiar landscapes on our way to play the same venue. “How’s her mom doing?” My friend shared what a hard year it had been. How can anyone cope with the violent loss of a child?

How are you doing?” I asked. This girl had been a family friend since childhood, close in age to my friend’s own daughters. That’s when she told me about Elaina’s last meal, last year.

She and a friend were Christmas shopping. Before they went to visit friends, then friends of friends, they stopped at a local Taco Bell. Within the next few hours, Elaina’s body would be riddled with bullets fired by a gang member and his stooge to forever bury any cellphone footage she had captured of them. It was all a horrible misunderstanding. What she thought was a flirtatious car chase romp was not. She had no idea of the true nature of their activities.