For grandparents Wanda and John Ayala, Independence Day will never again be a cause to celebrate. On Saturday, the Fourth of July, their 11-year-old grandson Davon McNeal was gunned down in Southeast D.C.

Davon was at a community cookout that his mother Crystal had helped organize in Anacostia. A little after 9 p.m. his phone died, so she took him to an aunt’s house close by to borrow a charger. The little boy hopped out of the car. Just then, shots rang out along Cedar Street.

“Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop,” remembers his paternal grandfather, John Ayala. “He goes to the ground. So at that point, [his mother] thinks he’s trying to dive. You know, you hear bullets, you get out the way. The problem was when she was looking he didn’t get back up.”

Davon was caught in a crossfire of bullets, in what his grandfather thinks was a neighborhood beef. The sixth-grader was shot in the head.

Wanda, his grandmother who is called ‘mama’ by all her grandchildren, remembers getting a phone call a little after 10 p.m. with the news. Everything else is a blur. She and her husband of 25 years raced to Children’s National Hospital, where Davon had been rushed after the shooting. She had an anxiety attack when she arrived.

She eventually calmed down and was allowed to see him. Davon was lying on a table, very small and very still. Wanda sobs uncontrollably remembering her last moments with her grandson. “I said, ‘Wake up Davon, baby, wake up, baby, mama’s here.’ ”

“Who does this to a kid?”

Violence was never unknown to Davon’s family. But they stood on the other side of it, working to stop it.

John Ayala started a chapter of the Guardian Angels in D.C., an organization that patrols streets, counsels criminal offenders and serves as a role model to youth. Its members — Ayala included — wear a trademark red beret slung across their heads.

Davon’s mother, John’s daughter-in-law Crystal, followed in his footsteps, working as a city violence interrupter, mediating between gangs to resolve conflicts and prevent retaliation. It’s a program D.C. has increasingly turned to in the past couple of years as homicides have spiked. As of July 7 there were 93 deaths in D.C., a 21% increase compared to the same time last year. The “Stop the Violence” cookout on the Fourth was part of Crystal’s efforts to keep the area safe.

John looks tired as he recites the names of other children in D.C. who have been shot: Makiyah Wilson, Karon Brown, and now his own grandchild. “This is ridiculous. Our babies are being gunned down, and this has got to stop.”

Ever since his older brother started playing football, Wanda says Davon wanted to play as well. She signed him up for coaching. Davon soon became a star running back and linebacker. Wanda says he dreamed of playing for an NFL team. “That’s all he talked about. And [he would say] when I make it, I’m going to buy my mother the biggest house I can find.”

Wanda says she and her husband John didn’t have a lot of money growing up as children. Even when they had kids, finances were tight. So when they could finally afford vacations, they were determined to spoil their five grandchildren. “It’s the difference between being a mom and a grandma. So with the grandkids, we just wanted to do everything with them,” she says.

Davon loved playing video games and hanging out with friends. But most of all he loved going on vacation. Ocean City, Florida, New Jersey. Wanda laughs remembering how the one thing Davon didn’t like was the water, but she was determined that all of her five grandchildren would learn how to swim.

“He was the hardest one to teach because he was scared of the water. So one time when we were trying to teach him how to swim, and he screamed so loud that everybody in the hotel heard it. They came running like, ‘What is going on? Who’s hurting this child?’ ”

One time Wanda and John took them to all three parks at Six Flags in New Jersey before coming home to D.C.: “I unpacked everybody’s bag, washed everybody’s clothes, repacked the bags, got back on the road to Ocean City. We did a 10-day trip!”

She smiles briefly, and then her face crumples. “Why?” she asks. “When they catch these guys, I would like the opportunity just to ask one of them, why?”

This story originally appeared on WAMU.