“Davon looked up to all of you guys. He called you uncle. I called you my family. You have no idea what kind of pain my family is going through,” McNeal yelled from the well of the courtroom. “My son is gone.”
The four D.C. men charged in Davon’s killing — Carlo General, 21, Marcel Gordon, 27, Christen Wingfield, 24 and Daryle Bond, 20 — all pleaded guilty earlier this year to voluntary manslaughter while armed. On Friday, D.C. Superior Court Judge Rainey R. Brandt sentenced General to 16 years in prison, Gordon to 10 years and Wingfield to 9.5 years. Bond’s sentencing was rescheduled for August.
McNeal’s barbecue was held in the cul-de-sac near an apartment building in the 1400 block of Cedar Street SE. Davon — a sixth-grader who had skipped a grade in school and had dreams of going pro in football — was headed toward his aunt’s apartment when he was struck by a bullet, authorities said.
McNeal said that now, instead of making plans to watch her son strut across the stage to accept a diploma, she visits his grave twice a day.
“I cry every day. I’m shaking. I’m nervous. I’m hurting. I feel like I want to give up. I miss my son so bad,” said McNeal, who worked as a violence interrupter in Ward 8 — which meant she often tried to mediate disputes on the street. “I’m supposed to be a violence interrupter, but I couldn’t even protect my baby.”
She alleged that family and friends of the men charged in her son’s death threatened her and her family on social media.
“Y’all took my child from me, but you can still go see your son. You can still hear your son’s voice from jail. You can still visit him,” McNeal said, briefly turning around to face the audience. “I have to visit my son in the graveyard.”
Before they were sentenced, each of the men apologized to Davon’s family, as well as their own families. General said he “loved that little boy myself. I just wish I could have saved him.”
Seemingly aware of tensions, eight deputy marshals were positioned throughout the room, watching over about 50 people who had come for the hearing.
As she finished addressing the men, McNeal stormed out sobbing and pushed a hand-sanitizer station to the floor. Several family members ran behind her.
“Let’s everybody breathe. Take a minute and breathe. Her family will calm her down some,” the judge said. “She lost her baby. She has every right in the world to grieve.”
During the nearly two-hour sentencing hearing, prosecutors revealed vivid details of the case. Several in the audience gasped as Assistant U.S. Attorney Shehzad Akhtar said the four men began shooting wildly “at a phantom shooter,” wrongly believing someone had come into the neighborhood and started firing.
“There was no such shooter,” Akhtar said.
With Davon’s family out of the courtroom, Akhtar played a half dozen video clips from various security cameras, which captured the shooting from various angles.
The videos showed Davon jumping out of the back seat of a car that dropped him off so he could join his mother at the barbecue as it was winding down around 9:15 p.m. Davon and others had spent the day in Ocean City, Md., his mother said.
As Davon rushed toward his aunt’s apartment, the video showed General running toward Davon and firing his gun. Davon fell to the ground; authorities said a bullet from General’s gun struck Davon in his head.
The videos also captured General’s three friends running behind him, shooting wildly toward a nearby alley, according to prosecutors. While there was no audio, bright fireworks danced across the sky as the men were running and shooting through the street and across a playground. One of the four ran past Davon’s body, the video showed.
After his arrest, General told authorities he believed he was “protecting” his neighborhood from a shooter. As he prepared for his sentencing, General told officials he had been smoking marijuana the evening of the shooting while also taking Percocet, the prosecutor alleged.
“We are here today because of General’s careless actions,” Akhtar said.
Kevin McGill, Davon’s football coach, who is known in Southeast Washington as Coach Kevin, encouraged the four men at the hearing to focus on changing their lives and using Davon’s death as motivation. He noted that, as a youth, he sold drugs and ran and shot guns in his Southeast neighborhood, but changed the trajectory of his life.
“I have a forgiving heart. It’s what God wants,” he told the men. “I came from the same background. I just changed my mind-set. I put the gun down and asked God for forgiveness. That is what you have to do.”
McGill said he saw Davon every day, and he reminded the men that Davon had great respect for them in the neighborhood. “I know he looked up to you,” the coach said. “I just pray for this family that God brings us peace and provides a calming salve for the family.”
The judge said she was surprised by the dozens of letters written by family, friends, former schoolteachers, pastors and deacons on behalf of two of those convicted in the case — Wingfield and General — and noted how different the descriptions of the men in the letters were to the description of those that would kill a child. She ordered all four men to obtain their GEDs while in prison.
After Friday’s hearing, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) opened a news conference on National Gun Violence Awareness Day with a moment of silence for the slain youth.
“We know today that the people responsible for Davon’s death were held accountable in our courts,” Bowser said. “We know that doesn’t bring him back. It is a painful, tragic, flesh and blood reminder of the cost of gun violence … There are real people, real children, real futures that end when people recklessly use guns in our community.”
Peter Hermann contributed to this report.
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