TUCSON: Christina-Taylor Green was born on Sept 11, 2001, four hours and four minutes after the first plane hit the Twin Towers in New York.  Her photograph was one of those included in Faces of Hope, a book of babies born on 9/11 meant to capture the spirit of optimism of the American people. For the author, Christine Pisera Naman, the 9/11 babies represented “the hope and the light that was uniting our country”. But at 10.10am local time on Saturday, in Tucson, Arizona, Christina-Taylor’s symbolic life became a symbolic death, epitomising a brutally disunited America.

She was shot outside a supermarket for no other reason than that she was, at the age of nine, precociously interested in politics. A neighbour took her to a meet-and-greet with the district congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords.

She had just been voted on to the student council at her primary school.

“She was a good speaker,” her father, John Green, told the Arizona Daily Star. “I could have easily seen her as a politician.” — Dawn-Guardian News Service