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Mother turns to high school forensics class for answers to her daughter's death

Posted at 9:54 PM, Dec 13, 2019
and last updated 2019-12-14 14:09:38-05

TULSA, OKLA — It was around 4:30 in the morning on February 21st, 2009. Andrea Holiday was woken up by a knock at the door.

On the other side, the medical examiner and a sheriff's deputy, with the news no parent wants to hear, your child is dead.

The last Andrea knew, her seventeen-year-old daughter Carissa was at a home in rogers county.

Now Andrea was being told her daughter was shot and killed. "I asked how and he said he doesn't know, she was babysitting a two-year-old, Andrea said."

She asked if the two-year-old accidentally shot her and was told no.

Carissa's death was ruled a suicide, but Andrea talked to her daughter the night before, and there were no signs of distress or depression.

Andrea says the people inside the home changed their account of what happened several times and gave a strange reason for Carissa having the gun.

No autopsy was performed, and no gunshot residue or DNA testing was ever done on the gun.

Andrea has never been willing to accept her daughter killed herself.

Now she is turning to a local high school forensics class for answers.

One of the top students in the class is Carissa's cousin, who was six years old when Carissa died.

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