D.C. residents gathered together yet again this week at the site of car crash fatality—this time, at the corner of V and 16 streets Southeast to remember Abdul Seck.

Seck, a 31 year old visiting D.C. from the Bronx, was walking to the store when he was struck by a Chevrolet Malibu that had been redirected after a driver of a Chevrolet Cruz ran through two stop signs and collided with the Malibu, according to D.C. police. Dejuan Andre Marshall, a 21-year-old resident of Southeast driving the Cruz, has been charged with second-degree murder in the incident, which also resulted in multiple injuries.

“One of the worst feelings is to say to your friend ‘Go to the store and come back.’ … And it takes too long to come back. And you feel something in your gut, that something is wrong,” Seck’s friend Ebony Munnerlyn said at the vigil, according to WTOP. “He had great things that he wanted to do for himself and now his family has to bury their son, which is something that a parent should never have to do.” Friends are currently raising funds to help the family pay for funeral expenses.

Munnerlyn tells DCist that Seck was a “very humble individual, very intelligent, very uplifting for others,” and that he wanted to own and operate an EMT transit company. She had known him for more than a decade. “It’s important for people to understand that he was a young person who was moving forward in his life and it’s unfortunate that he had to lose his life that way,” she says.

The mood at the vigil for Seck was “somber,” says Dorcas Agyei, the Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner whose single member district includes the corner where Seck died. “It was disdain for the city taking so long to act because there have been multiple requests for any kind of safety at that intersection that have gone unheeded.”

Now, following Seck’s death, the District Department of Transportation said that plans are underway to install an all-way stop at the corner of V and 16th streets SE and speed bumps on the intersecting roadways. There’s already a temporary stop sign in place at the intersection and new crosswalk paint.

While Agyei is glad for DDOT’s attention to the intersection, she says she hopes “that we are not implementing policies based on death. That’s unacceptable, that should not be the catalyst for change. We should be proactively fixing streets, safety fixtures, and conditions that lead to violence.”

Among the attendees of Seck’s vigil were members of D.C.’s biking community, who on Friday mourned the loss of Dave Salovesh, a 54-year-old D.C. bike advocate was struck and killed while riding his bike on Florida Avenue NE two days before. “I was really happy to see a lot of the cyclist community out there to support us, seeing as they had lost their own,” says Agyei.

The deaths of Salovesh and Seck have inspired a renewed commitment from advocates for safe streets, and a call to better implement the mayor’s plan to end traffic fatalities throughout the city by 2024. Since Bowser announced her adoption of the Vision Zero program in 2015, pedestrian deaths in the District have increased rather than declined.

While bike lanes in particular are often viewed as signs of gentrification and new residents, the issue of pedestrian safety has a particular impact on areas with limited transportation investments. The largest percentage of traffic deaths in 2018 occured in Ward 8. Eleven, or nearly a third of D.C.’s 36 traffic deaths last year, happened in that ward, according to a group of activists advocating for safer streets.

“It’s time for us to bridge the Anacostia and work together to protect one another,” said Ronald Thompson, Jr., who lives next to the crash site, in a press release announcing the vigil for Seck. “Essentially, what that means and sounds like is activists and advocates from West of the River coming East of the River to build a coalition of people who want complete streets and have the political force behind them to be heard.”

But even as Seck’s death has led to changes on the street where he died, his family is “not only dealing with the emotional burden of his death, but also the economic burden,” says Agyei, who adds that the Seck family is hoping to send his body to Senegal. Seck was born in Senegal and spent some of his childhood there, per Munnerlyn. A GoFundMe has been launched to help them raise $5,000 for funeral expenses.

Previously:
One Pedestrian Killed, Five People Injured In Southeast Car Crash

This story has been updated with comment from Ebony Munnerlyn.