Imani had met the boy when he was five years old through the family center where she worked as a social worker in the mornings. He had been brought in to see her shortly after his father killed his mother and the boy was handed over to the state. “I got a picture o’ him you can see,” Imani said, wanting to preserve some part of him further by helping Aria to put a face to the name.

But when Imani handed Aria the phone after scrolling through it, it wasn’t a picture on the screen. It was a news article. The man staring back at her was not a stranger, like she had expected. It was the face of Kendrik, the man who she had talked to once while they waited for the lunch service to begin. She had seen him many more times after that in passing. Aria felt sick to her stomach. “Oh my God, I know him … He comes here all the time. I even talked to him once,” Aria said.

“Police Fire 54 Shots, Report Finds It Reasonable,” the headline read. Aria continued reading. “It is unclear how many of those bullets struck Kendrik McCoy, a 22-year-old black man, but attorneys have said he was hit around 26 times. Police officers responded to a call about a man who had been threatening residents with a gun in Compton near West Piru Street. Officers say they saw the gun in the man’s pocket and believe that he was reaching for it when they threatened him with arrest. The shooting has set off demands by the community for police accountability and an independent investigation into the entire department’s training and an alleged pattern of racial profiling. City officials in April said they were inviting US Department of Justice mediators to hear from residents and create a ‘community engagement plan.’”

Aria continued to read the article until she reached the bottom. The first thought that she had was about his girlfriend at Foot Locker. The locks of his prison bars had yawned loose and promised him a life that was worth living for. He had lost that promise in an altercation that had lasted less than three minutes. Everything about it felt wrong. Imani was not alone now in her incapacity to digest it.