Congressman Sean Casten’s daughter dies after organising school gun control programme
Many tributes have been paid to ‘temendous’ high school graduate
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Your support makes all the difference.The teenage daughter of Democrat congressman Sean Casten has died at their family home, his office and reports have said.
Mr Casten’s office said in a statement on Monday night that Gwen had passed away and that “The Casten family requests privacy, and we will be issuing no further comment during this heartbreaking time”.
She was found “unresponsive” at 7am at the family home in Downers Grove, Illinois, a Chicago Police Department official told the Chicago Tribune.
“First responders determined that the subject was deceased,” the report added. No further information was available on Tuesday.
Gwen was an active campaigner on issues including gun control and according to her father, had only recently been working with other teenagers to train them to treat gunshot wounds.
He told Newsy in an interview he had “tremendous pride” in his daughter for the programme and also “tremendous shame” that the United States had experienced many mass shootings at schools.
The Democrat added that his daughter had done what “sitting United States senators do not have the courage to do themselves”.
Gwen was also reportedly a member of the Illinois chapter of March for Our Lives, the youth-lead gun control movement formed in the wake of the Parkland massacre.
She had graduated from high school last month with Mr Casten saying: “We are extremely proud of her and all the #Classof2022 graduates with bright futures and good trouble ahead of them!”
Mr Casten has also recently spoken out for greater control legislation after 19 children and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde, Texas, on 24 May.
Ahead of the announcement of her death by his office on Monday, television networks across Illinois were asked to pull his re-election campaign adverts, reported CBS News.
He is running for re-election in the redrawn Illinois 6th congressional district and has been a member of Congress since January 2019.