A memorial near where Ty’ah was shot to death. Danny Nguyen/The Washington Post
She loved french fries, and pizza with “everything on it.” Ty’ah Settles covered the walls of her family’s apartment in Southeast Washington with colorful doodles. She was looking forward to starting daycare in August.
On Friday night, D.C. police said, Ty’ah was riding in an SUV that went through a gun battle near her home. The cheerful, chatty 3-year-old, the daughter her mother had always wanted and called her “twin,” was killed by a stray bullet.
“She brightened a room,” said Ty’ah’s mother, Darnisha Pelzer. “Everyone loved her.”
Ty’ah was the District’s 58th homicide victim this year and the youngest. Hours earlier, in a separate incident, a high school student was grazed in the head by a stray bullet that flew through a classroom window. According to a police affidavit filed in court, both suspects in the shooting were seniors at the school.
Deadly crime rose in cities across the country during the coronavirus pandemic, but it has been slower to recede in D.C. than elsewhere, unnerving residents and prompting a rollback of criminal justice measures. Officials have blamed other factors, including arrest rates and court rulings, for the failure to stem the violence.
Violent crime is down from last year’s historic peak, which ended with the most homicides in a quarter-century, and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser earlier in the week suggested that reporters were failing to cover the positive trend. She has yet to comment publicly on the two shootings.
In Friday’s deadly shooting, police said more than two dozen bullets were fired along Hartford Street SE, scattering shell casings on sidewalks and a road around the corner from a fire station in Garfield Heights. Police said at least one of those bullets struck the SUV that Ty’ah was in. Nobody else was reported injured.
No arrests were made in that case as of Saturday. Hours earlier, Police Cmdr. LaShay Makal, who heads the 7th District station, two blocks from the scene, told reporters that detectives had no description of assailants or even a vehicle. They did not know how many people fired weapons.
“My phone should be ringing right now,” Makal said, referring to potential witnesses or people with information. “We really, really need the community to reach out and help us.”
The shooting once again left residents angry and frustrated over crime.
“I can’t comprehend why yet another family is grieving the loss of a loved one due to the senseless violence in our city,” said Joseph Johnson, who chairs the Advisory Neighborhood Commission for the area where Ty’ah was killed.
Ty’ah was the sixth victim under the age of 18 slain in D.C. this year, and the youngest to be fatally shot since 15-month-old Carmelo Duncan was killed while strapped in a car seat in his father’s vehicle in December 2020. Ty’ah was killed nearly a year to the day that 10-year-old Arianna Davis was fatally stuck by bullets while in a car that also happened in a gun battle.
Arianna’s death on Mother’s Day 2023 came to symbolize the city’s lethal violence. Now, another little girl has been struck down by bullets a week before that same celebration. And the city has another child to mourn – this one sporting pigtails, chubby cheeks and a broad smile.
Police said Ty’ah Settles, 3, was struck by at least one of a barrage of bullets fired on Hartford Street SE in Washington, D.C. Contributed photo from family
On Saturday, Ty’ah’s mother, 26-year-old Pelzer, shared some brief remembrances of her daughter, who was seen in the household as a budding track star. Pelzer managed to smile when asked about how it felt to have a daughter join her family, which includes an 8-year-old son.
“A girl version of me,” Pelzer said, burying her head in her hands and crying.
Pelzer smiled again when she talked about one of Ty’ah’s favorite hobbies – painting, which is evident on the walls throughout the apartment, which is a half-mile from where the shooting occurred. There are splotches of green and light gray near the kitchen, and blue over the living room couch, and elsewhere.
“You can look around,” Pelzer said, spinning as she marveled at her toddler’s frescoes. “You can see. Literally, see. Everything you see on the walls, she did.”
Pelzer did not want to talk about what happened when the shooting started Friday night. Police said only that a family member had sped Ty’ah to a fire station a block away. From there, U.S. Park Police flew the child in a helicopter to a hospital, where she died.
On Saturday morning, Hartford Street, just off Suitland Parkway and Alabama Avenue, appeared quiet. A soft rain fell, and police tape drooped over several blocks. Idling police vehicles continue to close off the area. On a sidewalk outside the apartment complex, a doll of a little girl leaned against a wall, surrounded by flowers and stuffed Disney toys.
Earlier, D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr., D-Ward 8, visited the scene and deplored the deadly shooting.
“Anytime a baby gets shot, man, somebody needs to be brought to justice,” he said in an interview. “It’s intolerable that we allow this to happen in our community over and over again. First of all, that’s not a man … if you know somebody that did it, they need to come forward.”
The debate over reducing crime in D.C. has been far-reaching, with police, judges, prosecutors, community groups and social justice advocates all facing blame.
Johnson, the Advisory Neighborhood Commission chair, said the city needs “stronger laws that don’t just slap the wrist but instead impose the strictest punishments on those who endanger our children and disrupt our communities.”
Bowser and the D.C. Council have attempted to do what Johnson asks. Lawmakers have passed public safety initiatives to give judges more leeway in detaining people before trial and easing some restrictions on police in their daily fight against crime. There are also stricter gun laws, among many provisions the mayor has made or proposed as crime grew into a major concern.
More recently, Bowser has declared juvenile crime an emergency, proposing laws that require children and teens to be prosecuted more aggressively for certain violent crimes and require authorities to take action to resolve all truancy cases.
Police have complained that not enough repeat offenders see consequences in court. U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves has pointed to court rulings that make achieving convictions in gun possession cases harder and past problems with the city crime lab, among other factors, for the number of cases dropped.
Prosecutors are now pursuing cases against roughly six out of 10 people arrested in the District, and Graves has expressed optimism that these and other efforts are starting to allow the District to catch up to other cities where crime has fallen.
Bowser has expressed frustration with the perception that violence is out of control even as numbers are starting to drop. But she seemed to struggle with that message on Monday when she attended an event promoting local businesses.
When a reporter asked her about the challenge of encouraging economic growth given that days earlier a man had been fatally shot in a U Street bar and six people were shot outside a Dupont Circle club, she seemed to blame coverage of crime for disinvestment.
“I think that’s really a question for our friends in the media,” she said, before criticizing the press for not reporting on a recent nine-day stretch over which no killing occurred.
Now, the city is grappling with Ty’ah’s death.
Said Johnson: “How do you find the words regarding a 3-year-old child?”
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