When Chioma Iwuoha, a Ward 7 community organizer and leader, saw a large gathering amassing on her block in the Greenway neighborhood on Saturday, she knew how she could help.

“When I recognized that there was a need and a potential increased spread of coronavirus, I packed up about 500 masks and started passing them out in the crowd with my friend,” she says.

Iwuoha says what looked like between 300 and 500 people were dancing and catching up friends, some of whom they hadn’t seen since the pandemic started. “It was very celebratory,” she says.

But within minutes, gunfire broke out. Iwuoha and her friend ducked under a set of stairs, but the hail of bullets killed one teenage boy and injured 21 other people, including a 22-year-old off-duty police officer who is still in critical condition.

Iwuoha, who had a sprained foot, re-injured herself, and her friend helped her limp to safety. She heard screams and saw people bleeding from bullet wounds.

She says she’s in “a state of shock,” and couldn’t fall asleep until 2 p.m. the following day. She’s still processing the experience. “It was a peaceful event,” she says. “People were trying to have some sense of normalcy and it just was all taken away with the shooters coming and shooting up the place.”

In the aftermath of the shooting, some residents and D.C. officials are calling for stricter enforcement of restrictions on public gatherings in accordance with city health guidelines, while others say the event underscores the need for bigger, systemic reforms.

Speaking at a press conference on Monday, D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said that he could not recall a single incident in his career where that many people were injured by gunfire at once. He said his department would investigate how police were unable to break up the hundreds of people gathered in clear violation of an existing mayoral order banning gatherings of more than 50 people, and largely defy another order requiring masks or face coverings in public places.

But Newsham and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser also emphasized that it was the individuals who chose to shoot guns into the crowd, and not the gathering itself, that caused Saturday’s deadly violence.

In response to a reporter’s question about whether this event would change the city’s policies regarding mass gatherings, Bowser irately responded that she was “surprised that your coverage is about mass gatherings and not about people shooting guns because that’s what the issue is.”

Bowser also noted that the event brought up a conflict between those who wished police had taken a more aggressive enforcement stance and others who may disagree with tackling public health concerns with police.

“We don’t think it’s OK for a block party to grow in that size,” said Bowser. “And at the same time, I’m saying that there’s other people who are saying, ‘Well you can’t send the police in, Bowser. That’s just going to cause more trouble.’”

The tension between mass gatherings and police enforcement has been discussed before by the police commander in charge of the Sixth District, where Saturday’s shooting occurred. In a meeting of the Anacostia Coordinating Council last month, Commander Durriyyah Habeebullah said she was actively recruiting partners from other agencies to help the police department address large gatherings, which she said were “everywhere” and were “contentious when the police come to try and disrupt them.”

Habeebullah said she was looking into asking the Department of Public Works to tow vehicles at gatherings, asking the city’s “Night Mayor” to help with possible solutions, and considering requesting that the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs fine individuals who may be vending at parties without a license.

“It’s not just a police issue, it can’t just be addressed with policing, because … it’ll be contentious, and that’s not what we want with 2020 policing,” said Habeebullah.

Newsham said Monday that police officers at the scene responded in a “heroic fashion.” Still, he expressed frustration over the size of the gathering—and whether his own officers could have done more to prevent it from growing so large.

“I am very concerned that a gathering of that size was able to accumulate without our managers over at the Sixth District being able to prevent that,” he said, adding that there were not enough officers at the scene to disperse the large crowd effectively.

In a statement to DCist, Ward 7 Councilmember Vincent Gray expressed his condolences for the family of Christopher Brown, the 17-year-old who was killed in the shooting, and emphasized the need to hold people responsible for not following the mayor’s restrictions.

“We must hold people fully accountable for violating the law based on guidelines that have been established for mass gatherings during this public health emergency,” he wrote.

Others noted what they saw as the need for bigger discussions. “Victim-blaming is often a strategy used to distract us from calling out the systemic issues institutions and leaders who allow them to persist. Don’t be distracted,” tweeted Janeese Lewis George, the Democratic candidate for the Ward 4 Council seat, on Sunday.

Iwuoha, too, acknowledges that the event violated the city’s public health restrictions, but says that without the shooting “it would’ve been peaceful, and me passing out masks would’ve increased the safety of it.”

She says the shooting underscores the need for investment in Ward 7, which she calls the “forgotten neighborhood,” and other areas east of the Anacostia River, and a community-wide conversation about the trauma of gun violence.

Iwuoha says victims of gun violence and their families need resources to process the experiences in healthy ways.

“These young people need guidance in order to be able to deal with their trauma so they aren’t picking up guns and solving problems with guns,” she says.

For her part, she says talking with other people who were there has been healing. “Just to be like, ‘I’m not alone in the ways in which I feel,’” she says. “‘I didn’t experience this alone.’”