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Tamera Mowry posts emotional tribute to slain niece, who won't be home for the holidays: 'The reality of you not being here hits stronger today'

Suzy ByrneReporter
Tamera Mowry, left, with her niece Alaina Housley, who was a victim in the Thousand Oaks mass shooting on Nov. 7. (Image: Tamera Mowry via Instagram)
Tamera Mowry, left, with her niece Alaina Housley, who was a victim in the Thousand Oaks mass shooting on Nov. 7. (Image: Tamera Mowry via Instagram)

Tamera Mowry‘s niece won’t be home for the holidays — and it hurts.

Alaina Housley, who was a freshman at Pepperdine University, was a victim in the Borderline Bar shooting in Thousand Oaks, Calif., on Nov. 7. Yesterday, she would have come home for the holidays, and the fact that she didn’t hit Mowry hard. The Real co-host posted an emotional tribute to Housley on Friday, and it wasn’t lost on her that it was also the sixth anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shooting, another instance of “senseless gun violence.”

Along with a photo of her son, Aden, with Housley under a blue sky with lots of little clouds, Mowry wrote, “Alaina. God, we miss you. Yesterday you were supposed to come home. The questions of why consume my mind. But I must hold on to the fact that our Lord is sovereign. The reality of you not being here hits stronger today. I miss your giggles, I miss your smile, I miss the way you would roll your eyes when you heard someone say something crazy. I miss the way you would so gracefully scoop up Ariah and Aden, and the way you took their hands and walked away to play. You had a heart pure with love and kindness. Oh what this world needs more of now. My children loved you. I loved you. I know I have a guardian angel with me now. But selfishly I want you here with me. Until we meet and sing again.?”

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She ended the post by adding, “Ironically, 6 years ago today the senseless shooting of #sandyhookelementaryoccurred. Praying for the families and individuals who have had to endure and survive senseless gun violence. The world moves on. We don’t.”

Housley, 18, was with friends at the country-themed bar for college night when the gunman open-fired. Thirteen people died, including a police officer as well as the shooter, who killed himself. Housley was initially listed as missing, so Mowry and her husband, former Fox news reporter Adam Housley, searched for information about her on social media. According to the Los Angeles Times, Adam drove to the Los Robles Regional Medical Center around 3:30 a.m. to see if his niece was there, but couldn’t enter because the hospital was on lockdown. They received the sad news that she had died several hours later.


The Housley family has since established a foundation, Alaina’s Voice, to promote positive and meaningful change to keep Alaina’s voice alive.

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Many tributes were posted Friday to the 20 young children and six adults murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on this day in 2012. In what must have been an especially upsetting event, the school had to be evacuated on Friday after a bomb threat was called in. The students were eventually sent home for the day.

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