The young girl in a Connecticut hospital fighting for her life was her granddaughter -- the child of the son Rice lost to gun violence more than a decade earlier.

The girl, Se’Cret Pierce, died Friday morning. She was 2 years old when her young father, Shane Oliver, 20, was killed in the fall of 2012 only a few miles from where his daughter was shot.

Having a son gunned down brought sorrow and despair to the family. Now a granddaughter had perished, too.

“Never in a million years did I expect to respond to a call for my 12-year-old granddaughter,” Rice, a crisis response specialist, said in a text message Sunday.