The Victims

DELISIA BROWN, 18

Eighteen-year-old Delisia Brown couldn't wait to go to the prom next month.

The Lane Tech College Prep senior had a date, and her cousin was making her a purple dress.

But a friend of Brown's was still looking for a dress, so the two went shopping Friday.

It was on their way back home from that shopping trip that Brown was struck and killed by a semi-truck that rammed into the Cermak/Chinatown L station Friday afternoon. The friend, identified only as Nicole, was seriously injured, Brown's relatives said.

Brown may have stopped at the Cermak station to get some food before heading home.

"She didn't deserve to die like this," Brown's aunt Nicole Ray said Saturday. "She just wanted to strive for the best."

A member of Lane Tech's cheerleading squad, Brown was a popular student who "loved to dress up and look real pretty," Ray said.

She worked part-time at a gift shop in the Loop. But she always found time to do her schoolwork, and was a straight-A student, her family said.

After her June 6 graduation, Brown was planning to go to either South Carolina State University or Purdue University, to major in psychology, her younger sister NaKeisha Brown said.

On Saturday, dozens of friends and relatives gathered at the Marquette Park home Brown shared with her parents and younger sister to remember "Lee," as she was called by those who knew her best.

Brown's parents, Jerry and Wanda Brown, declined to speak with reporters.

Funeral arrangements were pending.

"I've got to be strong," said Latonya Washington, Brown's older sister. "I know my sister is in a better place."

Though they watched news coverage of the deadly crash Friday, it wasn't until Saturday morning that most of Brown's relatives learned she had been killed, Ray said.

Tunlisha Tobar, the cousin who was making Brown's prom dress, said Brown never got to try it on.

"I thought I would have been seeing her this weekend for a fitting," Tobar said. Now it's a dress "nobody's going to wear," she said.

Photo: Delisia Brown, 18 ;