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New York Group Honoring Children Killed By Gun Violence In Special Yearbook

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Children who lost their lives to gun violence are being honored in a special yearbook.

CBS2's Raegan Medgie reported New Yorkers Against Gun Violence is honoring all children who were victims to gun violence. The organization's yearbook will show their photos, describe who they were, where they were from and why they didn't wear their cap and gown.

Akeal Christopher will be part of that yearbook. In 2012, the teenager was shot and killed in Bushwick on the last day of school at a graduation party.

"Some unknown assailant approached these seven kids. Four shots were fired and my son went down," Natasha Christopher, Akeal's mother, said. "Then on July 10, 2012, my son died on his 15th birthday."

Christopher said she was initially hesitant of including her son in the yearbook.

"Then I sat and thought about it and thought it's a great opportunity for people to see all these victims who lost their lives to senseless gun violence," she said.

The children range in age – from 6-year-old Dylan Hockley, who died in the Sandy Hook massacre that left 26 dead, to 17-year-old Kedrick Ali Murrow, who was a junior in Queens.

"Kedrick was supposed to graduate high school in 2010," Shenee Johnson, Kedrick's mother, said.

However, weeks before he was supposed to graduate, a fight broke out at a graduation party he was at.

"Kedrick decided to get two young ladies who attended the party with him out to safety, but he went back to get his other friend," Johnson explained. "Kedrick and the guy with the gun started fighting, and he shot Kedrick on the side and Kedrick died at the hospital."

The yearbook is also serving as a petition by asking for signatures to push Congress for tougher gun laws and prevent anymore pictures from being added.

"I have two other surviving children and I'm not ready to bury another child," Christopher said.

The petition to collect the signatures ends it two weeks. Those signatures will then be added to the yearbook which will be presented to Congress later this summer by the organization and its supporters.

Although only 11 students are profiled in the yearbook, the creator said they represent the more than 33,000 students who have been killed by guns since 2001.

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