A family has said goodbye to 18-year-old cheerleader Kimber Mills after she spent three days on life support following a shooting.
Kimber was given an honor walk along the corridors of UAB Hospital in Alabama on Tuesday afternoon as she headed into a 5pm surgery to become an organ donor.
Her family said doctors had told them her injuries were so severe she would not survive after she suffered gunshot wounds to the head and leg on Saturday night.
She was one of four people hit by bullets during a fight at a party in the woods off Highway 75 near Palmerdale on Saturday.
The honor walk began at 4pm and hundreds of people attended to pay tribute.
Silas McCay, 21, was also shot at the party but managed to get up and walk behind Mills as she was wheeled into surgery, his brother told CBS.
‘It was emotional,’ Shane McCay said. ‘As soon as she turned that corner, the whole hallway crying. You can tell she was really loved by the whole community.’
Shane added that his brother is ‘doing pretty well.’ ‘He got shot ten times and he’s already up out of bed walking.’
Kimber Mills will be taken off life support on Tuesday evening, three days after she was shot at a bonfire party near Cleveland in Alabama
Kimber was a well-liked cheerleader at Cleveland High School who aspired to become a nurse, her sister Ashley said
Another shooting victim remains in hospital.
Mills’s sister Ashley shared another person’s tribute to Facebook after the surgery took place.
‘When Kimber Mills, 18 years old and full of sunshine, took her last earthly breath, Heaven threw a party loud enough to rattle the hinges loose on the pearly gates,’ the tribute read.
‘Kimber didn’t tiptoe through those gates — she cartwheeled. Pom poms and all… But back on Earth, the lights were dimmer. At UAB, the hallways echoed softly with footsteps and tears as nurses lined up for Kimber’s parade.
‘Her family, friends, they all followed behind her bed — broken, proud, and wrapped up in a kind of love that hurts deep.
‘Doctors and strangers bowed their heads as she passed, not because she was leaving, but because she was giving.
‘Her heart, her lungs, her kidneys… her life — pieces of her that would beat and breathe in others. Lives that would live on because of a girl who once led cheers and chased sunsets.’
Ashley had earlier written: ‘Once they declare her brain dead, she will be an organ donor.’
Steven Tyler Whitehead, 27, has been charged with Kimber’s attempted murder
A huge vigil was held for Kimber on the field of her high school on Monday evening, as family and friends prepare to say goodbye
Speaking at a vigil held at her high school Monday night, Ashley said: ‘We shouldn’t be burying our little sister.
‘It should be the other way around. It’s supposed to go from oldest to youngest not youngest first.
‘She wanted to do things that I wanted to that I wasn’t able to, like be a nurse, help people and that’s exactly what she was trying to do that night… just help.’
Steven Tyler Whitehead, 27, was arrested following the shooting and has been charged with three counts of attempted murder, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said.
The group were shot after a fight allegedly broke out. Kimber’s family says she did not know Whitehead.
Ashley told WBRC: ‘He was trying to hit on a girl there and give her things that she didn’t want,’ in an apparent reference to a spiked drink.
‘We hope he gets what he deserves,’ she added.
The shooting happened on a patch of private property known as ‘the pit’ where local teenagers gather to hang out and listen to music.
Dispatch recordings obtained by ABC3340 described a young woman who had been shot in the head.
A GoFundMe page initially set up to raise cash for Kimber will reportedly be also used to help the other victims of the shooting.
