On a Wednesday evening in Northeast Washington, D.C., 16-year-old Thurgood Marshall Academy senior Zaire Kelly was walking home from a college preparatory class when he was confronted in a small park just steps from his front door. Kelly, a promising student and track athlete who had recently received the Attorney General’s Right Direction Award and planned to attend Florida A&M University, was threatened at gunpoint by 19-year-old Sequan Gillis, who attempted to rob him of his cellphone.

According to reports, Kelly stabbed Gillis in the abdomen with a pocketknife in an act of self-defense; Gillis then shot Kelly in the head. Kelly was pronounced dead at the scene. Gillis was found a short distance away and later died at a local hospital. Police recovered the handgun near Gillis’s body. Hundreds attended a vigil mourning Kelly and his lost future.

Does anyone who knew Zaire, or who was in that neighborhood that evening, have information that could shed more light on what happened?