"She was a girl who once brought an injured sparrow to school and stuck it sweetly inside her locker -- next to the gang signs.

A girl who brought a sick kitten to a doctor, but who also was expelled from an after-school program for punching another girl in the face.

A child who rescued animals, but who could not be rescued herself.

Just a few weeks before she would have turned 12, Sidney Jade Mahkuk was found dead one morning last month of a cocaine overdose on a south Minneapolis street, a tragedy and perhaps a crime that police are investigating.

Her body was found lying just a block from Children's Hospital, left to the hard streets she already knew all too well."

Get the Story:
Nick Coleman : How Sidney slipped away (The Minneapolis Star Tribune 12/4)
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