Kyana Love was on her shift as a forklift driver when a Chicago police detective arrived to see her Tuesday.
It had been two days since Love’s 16-year-old daughter, Kaylah, left their Garfield Park home Sunday to pick up McDonald’s wearing a Rugrats jacket and carrying a skull-shaped purse with a bow. Only one day had passed since Kyana Love reported her daughter missing.
The detective wanted to know if Love, 39, recognized the jacket and the purse with a person they had found dead Monday in Horan Park, also in the Garfield Park neighborhood. A woman who called 911 March 16 to report two people fighting in the park found Kaylah Love there the next day near the playground with stab wounds to the head and neck and other injuries from blunt-force trauma, according to police.
Instead of her daughter in the living room blasting R&B music and Taylor Swift, Kyana Love has been coming home to a houseful of people bringing food and trying to help with memorial arrangements.
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Kaylah Love had recently declared herself the family chef, Kyana Love said.
“I told her a story that I messed up the spaghetti at a barbecue and Kaylah looked at me and she told me, ‘Get out the kitchen. I got it,’” Love recalled.
Kaylah had a talent for cooking, able to make spaghetti, chicken alfredo, corn and rice and packed lunches and made holiday meals, Kyana Love said. Although she was only a sophomore at Manley Career Academy, she seriously considered studying culinary arts in college. She’d recently gotten a food handlers’ certificate to get restaurant experience this summer, her mom said.
“She was on her way,” Kyana Love said. “A 16-year-old with a dream in life got taken away.”
She still gave hugs “even though she was a teenager” and had recently gotten a job in an art gallery through the program After School Matters, her mom said. She asked to decorate her entire room in black, down to the sheets on the bed, drew anime characters and loved clothes: leather jackets, collared shirts and high-tops.
Kyana Love wanted her to have fun as a young person before she had to take on the adult responsibilities of paying bills and caring for a family. “I wanted to show her what success could be,” she said. “My baby girl can’t see if I could become a screenwriter and I can’t help her with her dreams, because her life has been cut short.”
The family said they were hosting a memorial for Kaylah at 2 p.m. Sunday across from Manley Career Academy.
Police said Saturday that no one was in custody in connection with Kaylah’s death and Harrison area detectives were continuing their investigation.
