9-year-old killed was born on 9/11

Christina-Taylor Green, the nine-year-old killed Saturday along with five other people at an Arizona political event, was drawn to politics from the awareness she was born on September 11, 2001, her parents said.

"She was born back east, and September 11 affected everyone there, and Christina-Taylor was always very aware of it. She was very patriotic and wearing red, white and blue was really special to her," Roxanne Green told the Arizona Daily Star.

"She was born on 9/11, the day the towers came down in New York City," her father John Green told Fox News on Sunday.

"It does say something about our society that my daughter was born on a tragic day, and she went out on a tragic day," he told CNN in a separate interview, fighting back tears.

The dark-haired, brown-eyed third-grader was one of 50 babies born on that date featured in a book called "Faces of Hope."

She had gone to the Tucson strip mall with a neighbor on Saturday to meet congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was still in critical condition Sunday after being shot through the head, according to the newspaper.

Christina-Taylor died in hospital after the shooting. Her neighbor, identified by the girl's father as Susy Almond, was shot four times and recovering from surgery at Tucson's University Medical Center, the daily said.

Six people were killed, including a federal judge, and 14 were wounded in the shooting spree, in which 22-year-old Jared Lee Loughner was charged Sunday.

No stranger to fame, Christina-Taylor's grandfather Dallas Green was a major league baseball pitcher who managed the Philadelphia Phillies when they won the 1980 World Series.

The Major League Baseball team issued a statement Sunday describing the shooting as "horrific" and her as a "senseless loss of life."

"The Phillies organization expresses our heartfelt condolences to Dallas and Sylvia and the entire Green family on the senseless, tragic loss of Christina's life. She was a talented young girl with a bright promising future," Phillies team president David Montgomery said Sunday.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with all the families affected by yesterday's horrific shooting."

The girl loved animals, dancing and gymnastic and was the sole female on her Little League baseball team, the daily said.

"She kept up with everyone, she was a strong girl, a very good athlete and a strong swimmer," said her mother. "She was interested in everything. She got a guitar for Christmas so her next thing was learning to play guitar."

Christina-Taylor was recently elected to the Mesa Verde Elementary School student council and had been interested in politics from a young age, said her father, who works as a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team.

"She was a good speaker. I could have easily seen her as a politician," he told the Arizona newspaper.

Christina-Taylor, her mother said, also enjoyed singing in a church choir and earlier last year received her first Holy Communion as a Catholic.

"She was all about helping people, and being involved. It's so tragic. She went to learn today and then someone with so much hatred in their heart took the lives of innocent people."

Christina-Taylor had an 11-year-old brother named Dallas, with whom she loved to go swimming, the mother added.

Her father John Green told Fox News that the the last time he saw his daughter was Saturday morning, just before she left for the political event.

"We made breakfast and said goodbye, saying 'I love you daddy.'"

"So beautiful -- we had nine beautiful years with her.

Follow Emirates 24|7 on Google News.