‘I heard her take her last breath and I knew she was gone,’ says sister of woman shot at Iron Bowl party in Hoover | AL.com.

I watched the Lions game today, and afterwards, as my dad tried to give me a hug, I was trying to stay mad at losing. We have to grow up. I saw a story in the current Sports Illustrated about some people who took the Auburn-Alabama gave to the extreme:

Two sisters went to a party to watch the Iron Bowl. After the stunning loss, one Alabama fan freaked out when she saw the sisters taking it lightly. “After the game ended, [Michelle] and her sister were joking around, not about Alabama’s loss, but about the Miami Heat.”

“I was saying I wasn’t even mad (about the loss). Like when The Heat lost in game four, I was sick to my stomach,” Neketa Shepherd said. “She started cursing. Her friends said she always did that when she got drunk and they took her outside.”

Unintoxicated, the sisters tried to drive home. However, an angry mob blocked their car in the parking lot.

“The woman was still outside, and was still angry. ‘She was saying she was going to beat us up,”’ Neketa Shepherd said. “Somebody was saying, ‘they don’t care about Alabama.”’

“Neketa Shepherd said they were concerned about hitting someone, so she and her sister got out of the car and asked them to move out of the way. They talked to some friends, and the next thing they knew, gunfire rang out.”

“She just started shooting. I heard five shots,” Neketa Shepherd said. “She was like 10 feet away. My sister never touched her, and she never touched my sister. They never had words.”

“Neketa Shepherd said her sister was a wonderful mother to three children; two boys and one girl, ages 9, 7 and 4. Her children were most important to her, but she also devoted her life to helping others.”

“As the oldest of five children, she spent much of her time helping to raise her younger siblings while their mother worked while growing up in Demopolis.  ‘Michelle was a mother figure to us a lot of times,’ Neketa Shepherd said. ‘We all looked up to her. If anything was to go wrong, we looked to Michelle to make it right.'”

This woman, 36, with three kids was shot to death in the parking lot by a crazy Alabama fan for laughing at their loss. LIFE IS BIGGER THAN SPORTS, and we all have to learn to let it go. Or else it carries over into reality, where dark, tragic things will happen.