Why would you say something like this?

The first week in December there was a mall shooting at the Westroads here in town. It was a truly a terrible thing.

Last week, I was making a purchase at a store and the clerk stopped, stared at me, and told me that I looked exactly like one of the young girls that was killed in the shooting at the mall. "That's really freaky," was her comment.

Why on earth would you tell a complete stranger that they looked exactly like someone who was just killed? Wouldn't you have stopped the person and perhaps instead said "You look really familiar."