Stray Bullet Pierces Reporter's Window, Killing Her

A horrifying story out of Kansas City, where a 24-year-old journalist was in her apartment when she was struck and killed by what appears to have been a stray bullet that came through a window. Aviva Okeson-Haberman was found unconscious Friday afternoon by a co-worker who was concerned she wasn't responding to texts, reports KCUR, the NPR affiliate for which Okeson-Haberman worked. Okeson-Haberman was put on life support, but died Monday. Hours before the shooting, the reporter had been looking at an apartment in nearby Lawrence, Kansas. The shooting is being investigated as a homicide.

The governor of Kansas, other public officials, and colleagues were all memorializing Okeson-Haberman on social media, the Kansas City Star reports. "Aviva was a creative, thorough, challenging, and insightful reporter. Always prepared, she told the full and complex story of our city in one of the most challenging years in its history. Her life showed us her compassion for those who too often were voiceless," the mayor of Kansas City tweeted. "Her death lays bare our gravest unsolved epidemic and the preventable tragedies too many families endure." Says KCUR's news director, "Her instincts as a journalist were spot-on. Aviva knew when something was amiss and was unrelenting in her pursuit of the truth." (More Kansas City stories.)