Denise Price and Pamela Brooks have been through this before. During a vigil Wednesday night at 7th and Kennedy Street in Northwest memorializing 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown, who died following a traffic stop last week, the two stood in solidarity with Hylton-Brown’s mother. Both women know all too well what it‘s like to lose a son.

“It’s always ongoing. It’s all over again,” says Brooks, whose son Amir Brooks died in 2014 after he crashed a dirt bike into a tree while fleeing from police. “We know exactly what the family’s going through and what they’re gonna go through. This is not something that’s just gonna end overnight. I’ve been going at it for six years now and still no justice for my son.”

Price, whose son Jeffrey Price died in 2018 after colliding with an MPD cruiser while riding a dirt bike, says when she first heard about Hylton-Brown’s death, she immediately thought of his mother and what she must be going through.

“It’s just heartbreaking for me because it continues to happen,” she says. “It happened in 2014, in 2018, now it’s 2020 and it’s still happening. We’re here to support his mom and anybody we can and, hopefully, they will find somebody to stop police brutality.”

After the vigil, a group of about 50 protesters marched toward the Fourth District police station — where a larger crowd congregated the night before — with candles in hand. Some of them held posters and flyers that read “Karon Hylton — His Life Matters” and “#NoChase.” Along the way, Hylton-Brown’s mother yelled “Justice For Karon” into a megaphone and called out Mayor Muriel Bowser, saying the mayor doesn’t know what it’s like to lose a child.

“You will never feel me, we cannot feel each other,” she yelled.

Protesters outside the police station threw water bottles over a low metal fence at officers wearing helmets and holding shields and batons. They then dismantled the fence and confronted the officers directly.

From there, the crowd swelled to around 100 people, with approximately 50 police officers surrounding them, blocking Georgia Ave .and nearby side streets. Tensions started rising as some people began setting off fireworks in the vicinity.

Around 9 p.m., police started surrounding protesters in the street near a McDonald’s and deployed a chemical irritant, smoke, and flashbangs. Protesters pointed fireworks in their direction before people started running and the crowd split into two.

MPD did not have updated arrest numbers by the time of publication, but at least two people were taken into police custody on the scene.

Family and friends who knew Hylton-Brown were there at the protest to mourn — and to express their rage at his death.

Reggie (who did not give his last name) pulled up the Revel app, used to rent electric mopeds in the city, on his iPhone. His last purchase is a 12-hour ride — the last one Hylton-Brown took before he died. He was there when it happened.

“I held him by myself,” he says. “They telling everybody get back, he holdin my hand, I’m telling him fight. He’s squeezing my hand so I know he hear me … That’s my brother, right hand since elementary school.”

Reggie says he let Hylton-Brown borrow his scooter, and when Hylton-Brown said he lost his keys, the two looked for them, but couldn’t find them. Hylton-Brown then took the scooter to search for them himself, which was when police started following him.

When Hylton-Brown saw the police were chasing him, Reggie says Hylton-Brown pulled into a nearby parking lot and asked why he was being followed, to which they said it was because he wasn’t wearing his helmet. He says police in the area had been harassing him and Hylton-Brown for years.

Hylton-Brown’s death weighs heavily on Reggie. He feels like he could’ve saved his friend.

“People tell me not to blame it on myself, but I feel like if I’d had told him no, don’t ride the scooter, we’ll walk. We can walk, bruh. We can walk and go find your stuff. I’m here with you all night, we can walk.”

“He was a good kid … everybody know him, lots of love, lots of energy, keep a smile on everybody’s face, wasn’t no threat to nobody,” he says.

Hylton-Brown’s death has renewed activism among members of the community after a long summer of protests against police killings of Black people and calls to defund the District’s police department. An MPD report says Hylton-Brown was killed after striking a passenger vehicle while riding a moped out of an alley, but people who knew him say that’s not the full story. At least one person told WAMU/DCist they had seen police chase Hylton-Brown for no reason.

Members of the community are now calling for MPD to release body camera footage of the incident to the public (Hylton-Brown’s family was given access to the footage). The department said it will release footage, but has not said when.

NBC Washington released security camera footage Wednesday evening that appeared to show police chasing Hylton-Brown on a Revel moped. MPD did not respond to WAMU/DCist’s request for comment. Police Chief Peter Newsham told the Washington Post Tuesday that officers are not allowed to chase vehicles for traffic violations.

Natacia Knapper, an organizer with the Stop Police Terror Project says protests like this are a natural response to police treatment of Black communities.

“This is like the inevitable end to continuing to have the police not just like protect these people but cultivating a culture where it is ok to victimize, violate, and kill people on the street without punishment,” she says.

Knapper added that while defunding the city’s police force is top on the list of demands she and others have, it is equally important to consider where that money could then be reallocated.

“When we ask to defund we’re not just saying take the money away, we’re challenging each other and we’re challenging the people who are in office to really, like, live the values they claim to have in this city,” she says.

WAMU/DCist updated this story to use Karon Hylton-Brown’s hyphenated last name at the request of his sister.