"She couldn't stand the injustice of it all," Panahi said. "All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted."

Family, friends mourn Iranian woman whose death was caught on video

Standing on a street corner in Tehran, a witness to the protests around her, Neda watched as the anger of her nation unfolded around her.  She was 26 years old.

It is said that as she stood on that corner, a Basij soldier hiding from one of the rooftops of the civilian houses took aim on her and fired, hitting her directly in her heart.

The name Neda in Farsi means “voice” or “call”.

Here is what I am certain of:  Neda did not know that morning when she woke up and dressed that she would become the voice of an entire nation.  She did not know as she sat  at breakfast that she would become the the inspiration of a movement.  She did not know as she stood on that street corner with her father watching her city being torn apart by the indifference of it’s “leadership” and the brutality of it’s theocracy that her name would be the one held up as a battle cry against injustice, against the evil of a government bent on the destruction of it’s own citizens.

Neda could not have known that yesterday morning would be the last one she would see or that her music teacher’s voice would be one of the last sounds she would hear. That a stinging whiff of teargas mingled with the smell of singed concreate drifting down the street from clashes further away would be the last scent she would breathe in.  That the last light in her eyes would be tainted with the black smoke of her burning city, Tehran.  I cannot imagine that she would have wished to become a martyr.

The image of her death is burned into my mind forever and my heart grieves for her family, for the life she had and lost all because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.