On the night of July 31, 2017, 13-year-old Ayeonna Watkins was shot and killed behind a 7-Eleven on Peterson Road in Middle River, Maryland. She and a group of friends were near midnight when a person stepped out of a nearby alley and opened fire. Ayeonna was struck multiple times in her upper and lower body and was pronounced dead at the scene; two adult men with the group suffered non-life-threatening gunshot wounds to their lower bodies.

Police treated the shooting as targeted but said Ayeonna did not appear to be the intended victim. Investigators linked the violence to an earlier altercation that evening between the suspects and someone in Ayeonna’s group. The community held a vigil and her mother publicly mourned the prospects Ayeonna would never have a chance to grow up.

In January 2018 Baltimore County police arrested two 19-year-old men, Alphonso Frederick Smith III and Roger Lee-Austin Eastmond Jr., and charged both with first-degree murder and two counts of attempted first-degree murder. Does anyone have information about that night or knew Ayeonna and her friends?