Dominique Williams was an extrovert who loved spending time with his four children. According to his family, the 32-year-old was mature and responsible, with a big heart—and he liked having fun at the mall or at Six Flags. He always wanted to take part in whatever his family or friends were doing.

James Johnson, 38, loved the culinary arts, music, and his family.

“He would take his shirt off his back for you,” Joseph Johnson, his cousin, says. “Me and James basically were the chefs of the family … when Thanksgiving came, he would call me and be like, ‘You make your list, I’ll make my list.’”

Both Johnson and Williams, who were close friends, were shot and killed last week by David Hall Dixon, a Pentagon Force Protection Agency officer who was off-duty at the time. Dixon told police he believed the men were breaking into a car in the parking lot outside the Takoma Park condominium building where he lived; Police later found that Dixon’s statements were inconsistent with evidence and he shot the men in their backs as they were attempting to flee from him in a car. Dixon has been charged with the murders of Johnson and Williams, along with the attempted murder of a third man, Michael Thomas, who was driving the car Dixon shot into.

On Thursday night, Johnson and Williams’s families, along with community members from both D.C. and Maryland, gathered for a vigil in their memory.

“We have suffered police violence too many times,” Carlean Ponder, an organizer with the Silver Spring Justice Coalition, told the crowd of dozens outside Northeast D.C.’s Marvin Gaye Recreation Center. “This time, the violence occurred in Takoma Park, Maryland … close to my neighborhood, but we’re here because these men were taken from your neighborhood.”

Johnson and Williams called both D.C. and neighboring Prince George’s County home.

In addition to expressing the depth of their loss, the family members who spoke at the event made an urgent call for further accountability—particularly when it comes to how Dixon’s employer and the Takoma Park Police Department handled a previous instance of his aggression. Police added additional gun and assault charges to Dixon this week after a video of him in a separate incident last May was published by multiple local news outlets and gained public attention. In the video, Dixon is shown pointing a gun at an unhoused woman having a mental health crisis in his condo building lobby.

The property manager of Dixon’s building sent the Pentagon Force Protection Agency a copy of the video footage last year, according to a memo the Board of Dixon’s condo building sent to residents on Monday.

“I strongly believe that the defendant’s past behavior should have been a red flag,” a woman who identified herself as the mother of Johnson’s 2-year-old son told the crowd. “Instead, they armed him and paid that itchy-palmed, unstable individual to serve and protect our communities.”

“He pulled a gun on a homeless woman … dealing with mental health issues,” said Montgomery County Councilmember Will Jawando at the vigil. “Then months later, he shoots two fathers, two men, two brothers, two sons in the back because he saw them and thought they were Black and doing something wrong. That type of person doesn’t need to be a police officer.”

Jawando offered his condolences and promised action.

“I’m so sorry,” he told Johnson and Williams’ families. “We love you, we’re going to wrap around you, but we’re going to get back to work tomorrow to make sure this doesn’t happen again. It’s not acceptable. I’m tired of dying a little bit every time one of us dies.”

The killings of Johnson and Williams came during a week laden with grief over police violence in the D.C. area and across the country. On Thursday, police in Chicago released video of an officer shooting and killing a 13-year-old Latino boy, Adam Toledo. On Sunday, a white police officer in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota fatally shot a 20-year-old Black man, Daunte Wright. And in the ongoing trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd last year, jury deliberations will begin next week.

For Rev. Graylan Hagler, the minister of Congregational Church of Christ, the killings of Johnson and Williams—both Black men—was connected to this larger web of loss.

“Every life is important and not one life should ever be forgotten, and not one life should ever be taken without some consequences for that life being taken,” Hagler said Thursday. “We’re facing an epidemic, an epidemic that’s been going on for a long time, where badges and oaths and guns somehow continue to take away Black life needlessly.”

Ward 8 Councilmember Trayon White emphasized the depth of what is lost when a family member is taken in an act of violence.

“It won’t just affect Domo and Zoe,” White said, referring to Williams and Johnson by their respective nicknames. “It affects their children’s children. Sometimes we see this trauma—we don’t know how it’s manifesting 10, 20, 30 years from now in the family of the children.”

Dominique Williams’ death has also added to a cascade of grief for his family, according to his cousin, Erica Teel. Both of Williams’ grandparents have died, along with Williams’ mother.

“Our cousins, our children are all we got, and they’re getting chopped away from us,” said Teel.

Teel said she sees her cousin in his children—and she thinks he’s looking down on the family from heaven, giving them the “strength to make it through each day.”

But the tragedy is still sinking in.

“When I got that call that day, a shock went through my body,” said Teel. “This was a senseless crime. My little cousin was taken from me. I don’t get to get no more hugs, I don’t get to see his smile. I don’t get to feel his presence.”