The scene at 7th and Upshur on Friday as EMTs try to save the life of a shooting victim.

I was sitting up in my home office around 11:50am on Friday when I heard a loud crash, and thought, “Wow, that sounds more severe than a fender bender.” So I ran downstairs and out the front door, looked down the block and saw a small white Honda Civic crashed head-on into my neighbor’s SUV. “Oh man.”

I started running down the street to help when the car doors flew open and people started jumping out. Two guys ran past me, with one throwing a gun beneath a car right as he passed me. I saw the gun and stopped. If this is a gunfight, I don’t want to be running toward it in shorts and slippers.

I urged my neighbors who came out to be careful, and then an MPD car drove up. I ran back toward the collision to see if I could help anyone, and the men who jumped out of the Civic and two women who were also in the car came running back. They were yelling, swearing, crying. Someone opened the unopened rear passenger door and a body fell out.

That’s how Friday started, and it ended with news that a shooting incident at 3570 Warder Street NW in Park View (with no apparent injuries) may have led to this crash and one man shot in the hand, and the death of 16-year old Kassius-Khon Glay.

5.28.21 Assistant Chief Stuart Emerman provides an update regarding a shooting that occurred at 7th and Upshur Street, NW. pic.twitter.com/lRxxToG0Z0
— DC Police Department (@DCPoliceDept) May 28, 2021

I really don’t know how best to process the event. A young man is dead, a family is upended, my neighbor had both of her cars damaged in the collision, and my wife and I had to figure out how to explain what was going on to my young daughter who was doing virtual school at home. There were ambulances, fire trucks, helicopters and MPD canine units. It was chaotic.

My neighbors spoke with one of the women from the white car — who said she was driving — and others spoke with officers on the scene. All the neighbors agreed they didn’t hear any shots fired before the collision — just the sound of the white car colliding with the SUV. People saw the car stop at the intersection of 7th and Upshur Street NW, then take off suddenly, swerve into the intersection and veer to the right, colliding with the parked cars.

A gun tossed by one of the men from the white Honda civic as he ran past me. I can still hear the heavy metallic clattering sound the gun made when it hit the cement.

Their car had what appears to be two bullet holes in the rear driver’s side passenger door. The back window was smashed and missing. Were those shots from the Warder Street incident, and now they crashed here? Did the shooting start inside the car, and those are exit holes, not entry? No idea.

Is this normal? I was just telling a friend Thursday night that Petworth seemed relatively quiet. Instead, a young woman was crying and screaming about her shot brother as paramedics tried to save his life, the other man who was shot walked back and forth on the sidewalk, swearing and yelling, holding his bleeding arm, and neighbors are standing there trying to understand what just happened. How the day went from quiet to mayhem.

The two cars allegedly involved in Friday’s shootings and collision being towed by MPD.

As a neighbor told WUSA news, “It's just a sad day," [she] said. "It's not just DC, it's all across the US. And what the solution is I do not know, but young people have to believe that their lives matter. You don't have to pick up a gun to solve whatever your problems are because death is final. There is no coming back from death. And it's a domino effect. Your family, the entire communities, we are affected by this.”