I'm Kristen Sevy. This is Murder She Told.

Music This is murder she told.

17-year-old Tanya Lee Cota Felix straightened the brim of her graduation cap,

her fingers brushing against the dangling tassel.

It was the evening of her high school graduation, Thursday, June 7th, 2012, and she'd imagined this moment for years. Her student career at Cambridge Ridge in Latin

school was coming to an end, and she was about to begin a new chapter of her life. It was time to

trade in the black and silver of her volleyball uniform for the green and gold

of Newbury College.

There, she planned on studying psychology in just a few short months.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

She could practically feel the electricity of the auditorium, the room alive with hundreds

of her peers eagerly waiting to take their steps across the stage and

receive their long-weighted diplomas. But she opened her eyes and saw instead her legs outstretched

in front of her on the bed and a tangle of IVs coming from her arms. The scent of flowers

came from sympathy, not celebratory bouquets that were paired with cards that read

Get Well Soon. Though she was wearing her graduation gown, beneath that was a hospital gown

that covered the dressing of the gunshot wound to her abdomen. Tanya Lee was in critical

condition. She had been shot five days prior and had been fighting for her life

ever since. She reached out weekly with one hand and her mother, seated at her bedside, took

it into her own and squeezed. The overbed table had been wheeled close and her laptop placed upon

it. A screen, a live feed broadcasting the graduation ceremony, let her forget for a

moment about the shooting and the fact that she wasn't the only one missing from the celebrations that

...