How it Went Down

THE INCIDENT
The known facts surrounding the shooting death of sixteen-year-old Tariq Johnson are few. On the evening of June 2, at approximately 5:30 P.M., Johnson sustained two nine-millimeter gunshot wounds to the torso. Police officers arrived at 5:37 P.M. Johnson was pronounced dead at 6:02 P.M. by EMTs at the scene. Police apprehended a person of interest, Jack Franklin, who was present when Johnson was shot but left the scene in a borrowed vehicle shortly afterward. Franklin was pulled over nearly four miles away from the site of the shooting, at 5:56 P.M. A nine-millimeter handgun, recently fired, was found in the back seat.
DAY ONE
1. PULSE
JENNICA
Red. Black. White. That’s all I remember. It was a blur, like a dream sequence in the sort of movie that comes with subtitles.
Red. Blood, spreading like spilled ink.
Black. His hair and skin, and the tar beneath him. He was kind of sprawled out, and it seemed almost right for him to be down there, like he blended in.
White. I couldn’t make sense of it at first. It wasn’t clean white, like snow. More of a wispy, dirty white, like clouds on an average winter day. I found out later he had a carton of milk in his hand. It got a bullet right through it, started leaking like a drain and puddling up on the pavement.
The spilled milk seemed wronger than the blood, somehow. I keep thinking that.
BRIAN TRELLIS
I’m not sure I had time to blink. It was over in a minute.
My brain coiled around the knowledge: The boy in the hoodie has been shot. The loud sound echoed in my ears, as did his final whimper. The soft clatter-crash of his fall. The sound-yes, the sound of the look the shooter gave me. It had a voice, that look. Sharp and clear like a bell.
I ended up kneeling beside him, the wrecked, bleeding boy. Flat-looking now, so flat.
My hands got dirty. Sidewalk dust, glass shards, blood. I got blood on my lip. One nervous dart of my tongue, and I
tasted it. My throat filled with the need to retch.
Nothing happened. Except I was blinking now. Blinking down at the boy. His eyes were open, unblinking.