Maurica Manyan used to smile so hard at work that her colleagues could see it through the mask she wore to protect against COVID-19. Her positive attitude made work feel better.

“Her smile could change the atmosphere,” said a fellow library police officer, who declined to be named for this story to protect his privacy. As Manyan’s public safety colleagues and other D.C. Public Library staff from across the city gathered for a vigil in Anacostia on Monday evening, the shock of her death was still fresh. The 25-year-old library police officer was fatally shot on Thursday afternoon in what witnesses described as a tragic accident during a training at the Anacostia neighborhood library. The class instructor, a retired MPD officer who had been teaching a group of library police officers how to use extendible batons, has since been charged with involuntary manslaughter.

D.C. Public Library staff and leadership from across the District came to attend the vigil. The crowd of about 20 people included the library’s executive director, Manyan’s colleagues on the library’s public safety team, and other library staff from branches as far as Mt. Pleasant.

“I think we’re all here because we needed to be here,” Dawn Fox, a library associate who builds the dioramas at the library’s Deanwood branch, told the intimate crowd at the start of the vigil. “I’m here from Deanwood, because I realize now more than ever before how important my D.C. Public Library family is. I love and appreciate each one of you. Each one of you are valuable in my world, and it would not be the same if we lost you.”

The pain of Manyan’s loss was felt especially among her colleagues on the library’s police force – some of whom were present at the training where she died. But at the vigil, speakers focused not on the moment of her death, but on who she was and the energy she brought to work every day.

“Happy” and “jolly” were the words that came to Sergeant Latione Wallace’s mind when she thought of Manyan, who had worked on the library’s police force since February. Wallace, a 34-year veteran of the library’s public safety team, said that what Manyan brought to their team “was life. You never heard her complain … she was always there to help. I don’t know a day that she reported to work with a sad face.” Wallace remembered the way Manyan would say good morning to her, her voice alive with joy and youthfulness.

Wallace said that Manyan was always talking about her father and how close their relationship was. And Manyan also had a young son, a baby boy.

“She was proud of him most,” Wallace said. “I pray that her family know that we love her, and she was an inspiration to all of us.”

DCist/WAMU has reached out to Manyan’s family. At a vigil the family held over the weekend, Manyan’s brother said that no one was more positive or had a better heart than his sister, WUSA9 reported.

“She’d do anything for you. I can’t describe how much I miss my sister,” he said at the event.

WUSA9 also reported that Manyan’s family still has serious questions about the circumstances of her death, which witnesses described as a joke gone horribly wrong. According to charging documents in the case, witnesses said they believed the instructor — Jesse Porter — was “trying to be playful” at the end of the session when he accidentally shot Manyan with a live weapon instead of a training gun.

Wallace said the team looked up to Manyan, even though she was the youngest employee of the library’s public safety team. Manyan had voiced future ambitions, like wanting to become an officer with the Metropolitan Police Department and using the library police force as a stepping stone to get there.

“She was our baby,” Wallace said. “So to see her going so soon, it’s really going to hurt.”

Fox, the Deanwood library associate, told DCist/WAMU that she felt the need to attend the vigil because she “needed to cry” and mourn, and she didn’t want to do it alone. And going forward, Fox said, she was determined to be there for her library colleagues emotionally.

“I’m going to watch out for my coworkers a little bit more,” Fox said. “To show them that you mean something, that I’m here, that I’ve got your back.”

At the vigil, library staff handed out buttons with a photo of Manyan on them to her colleagues on the public safety team. They made a plan to create more, so that the entire library police force could start wearing them.