More than 600 people filled the small sanctuary, hallways and kitchen of a West Side church Monday to pay their final respect to a 15-yearold student who was remembered as a fun, loving person that everyone wanted to be around.
Family, friends and Orr high school’s students and faculty consoled each other at Sunshine M.B. Church on West Roosevelt Road as Kadiedrah Marsh’s life was celebrated. The crowd grew so large that closed-circuit televisions were set up in the church’s vestibule and in its kitchen area.
Two of the girl’s friends, who did not want to be identified, had a hard time coming to the realization that their friend will no longer be seen in the school’s hallway between classes. “I’m scared,” one of the girls said about going into the church to view Marsh’s body.
The slaying affected the accused’s family, as well. The woman charged with killing Marsh cried, and her two sisters ran from the courtroom, after a Cook County Circuit Court judge ordered her held without bail March 7. Tennile Tyson, of the 1000 block of North Waller Avenue, is charged with first-degree murder in the March 2 shooting death of the Orr student.
Verbal harassment from Tyson, 20, over the last several months, aimed at Marsh’s sisters, culminated in the teenager’s death, said Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney Mary Innes. Tyson was angry that her boyfriend remained on good terms with one of his ex-girlfriends, a sister of Marsh’s, according to Innes.
Innes explained that after a trip to a West Side pizza parlor Sunday around 9 p.m., Tyson and her boyfriend ran into Marsh and her two sisters as the sisters walked to their grandmother’s home in the 800 block of North Waller Avenue.
The boyfriend stopped to speak with a friend while Tyson kept walking. With less than 20 feet between Tyson and Marsh and her sisters, the woman pulled a .357 handgun from her purse and aimed at the sisters, Innes said. “I’m going to kill one of you b—–s,” Tyson reportedly said to the sisters before firing the fatal single shot that struck the teen in her chest.
After the shooting, Tyson ran through a gangway, where the gun was later recovered, according to Innes. Innes said Tyson told her boyfriend, “I had to shoot her [one of Marsh’s sisters].” Three days after the shooting, Tyson turned herself in Rev. Marshall Hatch of New Mt. Pilgrim M.B. Church on the West Side. Hatch prayed with Tyson before calling authorities.
She has no previous criminal history.
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