As Alexis Brown, 22, drove from Albany, N.Y. to the District on Friday to mourn her half-brother Karon Hylton-Brown, she said she struggled to recall scenes of their shared childhood in Northwest. Instead, her mind flashed to police camera footage of a crash that killed him.

“It’s hard to even think of memories when you’re thinking about what happened,” she said. “There’s no time or space to mourn.”

Known as Rondo to his friends, Hylton-Brown, 20, had a reputation for cracking jokes. He also had a serious side: He was determined to get his GED and hoped to become a firefighter and family man for his girlfriend and their three-month-old daughter, Za’Hara.

But instead of planning for his future, Hylton-Brown’s family and friends are seeking answers after he died in a crash following what police say was an attempted traffic stop.

His death has triggered a cascade of protests, a U.S. attorney review and the administrative leave of four officers. It has also shattered a D.C. family.

“Karon was my baby, he was my love, he was my little—my little baby. He will always be my baby,” his mother, Karen Hylton, told WAMU/DCist on Thursday.

The Metropolitan Police Department said officers spotted Hylton-Brown riding a rented Revel moped on a sidewalk without a helmet around 10 p.m. on Friday, October 23, and tried to make a traffic stop. As Hylton-Brown rode out of an alley, he collided with an oncoming car. Officers gave Hylton-Brown first aid before he was transferred to a hospital, police said. He was taken off life-support on Monday evening, according to family.

Family and friends take issue with the police account, saying it fails to acknowledge that officers initiated what they allege was an unauthorized chase that directly led to Hylton-Brown’s death.

Reggie Ruffin, a longtime friend of Hylton-Brown’s, rented the scooter that Hylton-Brown was riding. A group of their friends were hanging out that Friday, taking turns on the moped, before Ruffin let Hylton-Brown use it to hunt for his missing car keys, he said.

“He ain’t get off the block before police chased him,” Ruffin recalled.

Ruffin showed DCist/WAMU the Revel receipt with the moped’s final route, a tangle of lines around the neighborhood.

Video clips from the body-worn cameras of two of the police officers trailing Hylton-Brown appear to corroborate Ruffin’s account of the chase. (There were four total officers in the car, and MPD has not released body-worn camera footage from two of them. No footage has been released showing the initiation of the traffic stop.)

“It looks like our police were following the moped that Karon was riding … And if your question is, ‘Does that violate our policies about chasing?’ You know, we have very clear policies about no chasing,” Mayor Muriel Bowser told reporters as the city released the footage on Thursday.

It also appears that at least two of the officers involved didn’t turn on their body-worn cameras until after Hylton-Brown was struck; MPD policy requires them to be activated from the moment a pursuit begins.

MPD said the incident will be reviewed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C., followed by an internal review. The four officers in the vehicle trailing Hylton-Brown have been put on leave, according to the Washington Post.

Bowser identified officer Terence Sutton as the driver of the police car. Hylton-Brown’s friends and family have alleged that Sutton repeatedly harassed him and others in the neighborhood. (MPD would not comment on the matter, as it is part of an ongoing investigation.)

Sutton’s body-worn camera footage indicates that he did know Hylton-Brown. The first audible thing Sutton says after walking from his cruiser to Hylton-Brown’s crumpled body is a sharp “Karon!”

Maureen Brown, 46, said Hylton-Brown was like a brother to her six sons.

The boys grew up together in Brightwood and played football at the nearby Emery Heights Recreation Center. It wasn’t unusual for Hylton-Brown to show up to dinner at Brown’s house. (The families are not related.)

“He was a really, really humble young man. I never heard Karon curse in front of me. I never heard Karon argue with any of the other boys outside,” Brown said. “No bad energy from Karon, ever.”

LaFonda Willis was Hylton-Brown’s middle school English teacher at Whittier Education Campus. She remembered a “hardworking, caring, persevering student,” a boy with tremendous energy and a gift for making people laugh.

“When he used to come into the door, you know, ‘Hey, Ms. Willis,’ the first thing he would do was put his arm around me,” she said. “He was always putting his arm around me, wanting that affection.”

Hylton-Brown’s infectious sense of humor and hard work were all the more impressive to Willis because she was aware he faced housing instability during his time as her student, which Karen Hylton confirmed.

Hylton-Brown went on to Luke C. Moore Opportunity Academy, an alternative high school. Willis said her former student stayed in touch and attended her “speakers bureau” program of professionals who spoke to students about their paths to success.

One friend, who identified himself as Huggy, said he met Hylton-Brown when they were both young boys and played football together. They stayed close.

“He was loud,” said Huggy, 21. “He was excited about everything.”

Nearly everyone who spoke to DCist also recounted that police were a regular presence in Hylton-Brown’s life, particularly in his later teenage years, along with those of other young Black men in the neighborhood.

Court records show Hylton-Brown had frequent brushes with law enforcement, starting with a citation in 2017 for driving without a permit and continuing with a number of misdemeanor crimes in the years that followed. In February 2019, police requested that he be barred from two blocks in Brightwood–just down the street from where he died–”due to his repeat drug arrests at the location.” It’s not clear if the ban was granted (he was sentenced to six months of probation in that case), but the request shows that MPD was in regular contact with Hylton-Brown, and that officers patrolling the area may have been familiar with him.

“They always harassed us,” said Reggie Ruffin, Hylton-Brown’s childhood friend. “For years now. It’s nothing new, it’s been going on for years.”

Aleah Ross, 23, met Hylton-Brown when they were elementary school students and said she witnessed officers harassing boys in the neighborhood “ever since I can remember.” She believes the police officers chased Hylton-Brown because they were racially profiling him, pointing out that “people ride without helmets downtown in Washington, D.C. every day.”

Hylton-Brown’s older sister said she heard reports about police harassment from her home in Albany, where she worked in a daycare center, and in particular about one officer.

“Officer Sutton. It’s the name everybody knows,” Alexis Brown said.

MPD and the D.C. police union didn’t respond to questions about allegations of a pattern of harassment. Sutton’s name also appears in a lawsuit filed earlier this year, which recounts that he was involved in an incident in which another officer allegedly performed a sexually abusive and unconstitutional search (Sutton was not a defendant in the suit). The case is still pending.

Brown said she urged her brother to leave D.C. and move closer to her. Those conversations now haunt her.

“When it happened, the first thing I thought of was, I wish he came out here when I asked him to,” she said. “What’s the point of being somewhere where cops are harassing you? That’s all you know, is to be there on Kennedy St. with your friends.”

Her brother resisted, she said, because he wanted to look after his mother.

Three months ago, Hylton-Brown and his girlfriend Amaala Jones-Bey had a baby girl. Friends said the new father was determined to provide for her. Now, Jones-Bey is fundraising for Hylton-Brown’s funeral.

“Karon wanted to be a great father and have a career for himself,” said 22-year-old Marcus, a friend of Hylton-Brown’s. He declined to share his last name, saying he and his friends had been harassed by police since they were in school.

Marcus said Hylton-Brown was spending his afternoons studying for his GED, so the two friends would meet up in the mornings. Together, they’d dream of careers: Marcus hoped to become a businessman, and he said Hylton-Brown wanted to be a firefighter.

“He had a plan, he just take time to execute,” Marcus said. “Everybody take time. Everybody grow up different, so everybody need time.”

Hylton-Brown didn’t get that time.

After the crash, he was hospitalized at Medstar Washington Hospital Center. His family claims the police identified him as “John Doe” at the hospital, which delayed Medstar’s ability to contact the family. The hospital would not confirm or deny the charge, citing patient confidentiality, and MPD also declined to comment.

Alexis Brown said their father didn’t hear the news until early Saturday morning, through word of mouth.

“Karon was with a friend,” she said. “His friend had to run to find his grandmother, his mother. And had to find them and tell them, ‘something happened to Karon.’ How? Why? Who wants to be notified like that?”

As a result, Brown added, her brother had no family by his side for the first night he fought for his life.

“[Karon] had to sit by himself. We don’t even know if anyone else was talking to him,” she said.

Since her son’s death, Karen Hylton has spoken almost every night at demonstrations outside MPD’s Fourth District Headquarters on Georgia Ave. NW. She said she is grateful for the support of her community.

“I want to thank them, each and every one that stands beside Karon and supports Karon, all of his friends that loved him, everyone that called me and said ‘Listen, this is what happened.’”

Grief, anger, and frustration fueled some of the most intense protests seen in the District since June. On Tuesday, protesters shattered squad car windshields and smashed four of the precinct’s front windows, according to MPD spokesperson Kristen Metzger. The following night, protesters shouted set off fireworks near a police line outside the precinct. Officers pelted them with pepper spray and flash bangs.

Over the course of multiple nights, 16 people were arrested in the protests, including Hylton-Brown’s father Charles Brown. In total, 23 officers were injured in protests, including two who were hospitalized, Metzger said. It’s not clear how many demonstrators were injured.

Hylton-Brown’s death sparked outrage among members of the D.C. Council. Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who chairs the committee that performs oversight of the police, has focused on the fact that Sutton can be heard saying Hylton-Brown’s name. Allen said he found it “viscerally disturbing” to see officers’ “familiarity [with Hylton-Brown] and lack of urgency” after the crash.

“At least one officer knew his first name and called him by it from afar as he lay motionless on the asphalt,” Allen wrote. “The officers walked, not ran, from the cruiser to assess Mr. Hylton’s medical needs. This cannot be divorced from the individual and systemic devaluation of Black lives in the District.”

Ward 4 Council Democratic nominee Janeese Lewis George has been in direct contact with Hylton-Brown’s family, and attended the Tuesday night protest and Wednesday night vigil. She joined calls for police accountability.

Karen Hylton alleges that Sutton was also involved in another police chase and collision years ago, which ended with one of Karon’s siblings, Robert, breaking his leg.

“One minute you’ve chased my other son … he broke his legs. Now you kill this son,” she said.

DCist/WAMU could not independently confirm that incident. A spokesperson for MPD did not respond to requests for comment on these allegations.

Hylton said she is trying to get permission to bring Robert home from a Maryland prison to attend his brother’s funeral.

Maureen Brown, whose six sons grew up with Hylton-Brown, said his death is one of several tragedies in their neighborhood. Her sons are still reeling from the death of another close friend, who was shot in the 4th District area two months ago.

“They haven’t really healed from that. So to see my kids cry, and just think about their friends…it’s hard,” she said. “I’m a little older, I can handle, you know, grief a little better. But it’s sad, as parents, [that] we have to watch our kids go through this.”

Brown said she’s holding her memories of Hylton-Brown close.

“He was a human being,” Brown said. “I just want people to remember Karon as a person. A humble person with a beautiful smile.”

Christian Zapata contributed reporting. This article has been updated to clarify that the four officers in the case were placed on administrative leave.