Students at Anacostia High School held a vigil Friday afternoon to honor their 15-year-old classmate, Thomas Johnson, who was shot and killed just blocks away from Nationals Park the afternoon of October 9.

Kamryn Anthony, a senior, helped organize the vigil, which more than 100 students attended. Its theme was “Reclaiming Our Peace.”

“We initially put this together to honor our fallen classmate,” Anthony says. “But we realized we needed to do something more, something that will really impact the community as a whole.”

She and her peers invited community leaders, and several attended, including At-Large Councilmember Robert White and Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White. The Ward 8 councilmember, in particular, received cheers from students when he asked students to come to the D.C. Council building and demand that adults take them seriously.

Anthony and the group that organized the vigil are asking the school and community to provide transportation for students after school and provide monthly mental health check-ups.

“If you’re going to be honest, this is mostly kids killing kids,” Anthony says. “We want there to be options, programs, stuff for kids to get into so they don’t need the guns and they don’t need the fast life.”

For Damien Thurston, a sophomore, the vigil strikes a particular chord.

“I wasn’t very emotional with it at first,” he says. “But right now, as it’s about to happen, I feel very emotional. I lost some of my family to gun violence. And it’s just kind of bringing back memories.”

Hanna Baker, an advisory neighborhood commissioner for 8A07, said it was difficult to see young people speak with such maturity about gun violence.

“For me, honestly, it’s incredibly sad,” she says. “Because [their] maturity comes from lots of experience. This is a level of maturity in death and trauma and violence that these kids should not have.”

Dr. Byron McClure assisted the students in organizing the vigil. He’s formerly the school psychologist and now works as the student experience redesign coach, which means he’s engaging with students as the school undergoes a shift in terms of its programs and models of teaching.

He says he’s proud of the students for stepping up to organize the vigil and trying to make a change in their community.

“Our students took the SAT a couple of days ago. How can you process, how can you think about the SAT when you have the weight of the world on your shoulders?” he asks. “People say that students need to learn about resilience. I say our students are already resilient.”

Principal William Haith, who grew up in the same neighborhood as Anacostia High, says this isn’t the first time the student body has mourned the loss of a classmate. Last year, student Gerald Watson was shot in an apartment complex.

Haith explains the students’ experience of gun violence extends beyond the deadly shootings.

“Not only are we losing students, there’s an increasing number of students who are victims of gun violence,” he says. “Some students have participated in the use of firearms. So the norm is that the students have access to these types of items.”

Haith says he sees his role as making sure teachers have the resources they need to make sure all students feel welcomed and safe.

“We know that students will hang with the folks that express love or where they feel safe,” he says. “I think as a building leader, I need to do a better job making sure that each and every student is either attached to an adult or feel welcomed in this building, where they’re seeking out this building for safety versus somewhere else outside.”

Police have not cited a motive in Johnson’s killing but say the shooting appeared to be targeted. The FBI doubled the $25,000 reward offered by D.C. police for information that leads to a conviction.

As of Friday afternoon, the case remains under investigation.

Johnson’s death marks the eleventh juvenile homicide victim this year. But it’s not the most recent—there have been 12 such homicides as of October 15, according to the Metropolitan Police Department, after 15-year-old Jaquar McNair was fatally stabbed on an Orange Line train last Friday. “Juvenile” indicates someone under the age of 18.

Of those victims, eight were killed in shootings, two by stabbing, and two children under the age of five were killed by blunt force trauma.