Pop star Janelle Monáe is mourning the loss of her cousin, a mother-of-three, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in Kansas.
Natasha Hays, 37, and her three children were asleep in their Kansas City home early Tuesday when someone fired an assault type rifle into the home.
Hays was shot and killed. Her school age children — ages 14, 16 and 18 — were not injured.
Monáe identified Hays as her first cousin in a tweet on Wednesday.
“Gun violence has struck home,” she tweeted, “My beautiful 1st cousin was murdered. She was a mother of 3. Loved by her community.”
“Nobody deserves to lose their mother, sister, cousin, friend, etc. to the hands of evil. Evil has no race,” she added.
Monáe is the 2nd celebrity in one week to lose a family member to violence.
Rap producer T-Pain tweeted a plea for the public’s help to find the man who stabbed his niece to death at her workplace on Monday.
Police issued a warrant for Tavon Q. Jackson, 25, in connection with the fatal stabbing of 23-year-old Javona Glover, the mother of his 2-year-old daughter.
No arrests have been made in either case.
