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He had loaded the dishwasher and taken out the trash. His chores done, the 12-year-old begged his mom to go outside to play on a warm spring Wednesday evening in Northeast Washington’s Carver-Langston neighborhood.

His mother, aware of the area’s violent history, said she reluctantly acquiesced. The sixth-grader hopped on a scooter, she said, and with his 9-year-old pal walking beside him, they headed down 21st Street.

Shortly after 6 p.m., D.C. police said, two people armed with guns exited a dark gray sedan with tinted windows and opened fire, unleashing dozens of rounds that struck the two young friends, along with three men, a woman and two parked cars.

Police said 29-year-old Aubrey McLeod from Maryland died at the scene. Efforts to reach his relatives were not successful. The other five victims were treated at hospitals for injuries authorities said did not appear to be life-threatening.

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The mother of the 9-year-old said her son was struck in the foot and was discharged from a hospital Thursday. The older boy’s mother said that her son was struck in one of his thighs and grazed in the head and that he was also recovering at home.

“I’m moving,” said the older child’s mother, who along with the other mother agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity to protect their children’s privacy and safety. “I can’t stay here. My son is afraid. He doesn’t want to go to school. He doesn’t want to go outside.”

No arrest had been made in the case as of Thursday afternoon, but a police spokesman said officers spotted the gray sedan in the Hill East neighborhood shortly after the shooting and pursued it. The spokesman said police lost sight of the vehicle as it crossed into Southeast Washington.

For a city coming off its deadliest year in a quarter-century, Wednesday’s shooting in the 1100 block of 21st Street NE, near Maryland Avenue, was a stark reminder of the violence that can suddenly erupt despite a drop in violent crime over the first four months of this year, compared with the same period in 2023.

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“Our communities deserve to be free of this violence and fear it leaves in its wake,” D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), whose ward includes Carver-Langston, said in a statement to his constituents.

“This is another example of violence that we just cannot accept in our community,” D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith told reporters at the scene of the shooting.

But for the people who live in Carver-Langston — bracketed by Bladensburg and Benning roads, the southern edge of the National Arboretum and Langston Golf Course — violence is common.

In 2020, residents complained of being trapped by daily gunfire and ducking in their homes at the sound of shots. Police at the time blamed a long-running feud between young people in the Carver Terrace and Langston Terrace housing complexes. That summer, a 45-year-old school bus driver was fatally struck by one of 43 bullets fired in a gun battle. And last year, another bystander, a 54-year-old woman, was fatally shot in a hail of at least 44 bullets. Both shootings occurred within a five-block radius of Wednesday’s shooting.

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Until this week, the area had been relatively free of gunfire, according to police and residents, who now fear a resurgence when spring turns to summer and more people congregate outside. Parker is calling for “targeted interventions to prevent ongoing disputes and retaliation.”

Salvador Sauceda-Guzman, chairman of the Advisory Neighborhood Commission for the area, said only “minor incidents,” such as gunfire that didn’t strike anyone, have occurred in or near Carver Terrace in recent months. He said he hopes Wednesday’s shooting “is an isolated incident, that it doesn’t continue to happen.”

Sauceda-Guzman said he was in the Ivy City neighborhood, about a mile north of the shooting scene, and heard the gunfire, which he described as “very quick, very sudden.” He reiterated a refrain from across the city: a call for more police. The department, with roughly 3,300 officers, is at a half-century staffing low, but Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s budget proposal includes money to add about 70 new officers over the next fiscal year.

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“We have lots of residents wanting a police presence, not just doing a 30-second drive-by,” Sauceda-Guzman said. “Bad actors aren’t dumb. As soon as they see the police leave, they know it’s a good opportunity to commit crime.”

Both children injured Wednesday attend the Browne Education Campus. The mother of the 9-year-old said her son had stayed late for sports and an after-school activity and joined his friend on 21st Street as he walked home from the school.

The younger boy’s mother said she was looking out a window to make sure he was safe when she heard the gunshots. “There were so many,” she said. She screamed his name and saw him running toward her apartment building.

“Then he slowed,” she said, and she rushed to him. “I was yelling at him to run faster. When he got almost to our building, he looked down. He just said, ‘Mom, I’m bleeding.’”

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She said a bullet had sliced open his left foot. She called 911. “There was so much blood,” she said.

At the same time, his friend, the sixth-grader, was lying on the sidewalk. The mother of that youth, who is 12, said her son collapsed after being shot and was struck by a car, knocking him unconscious. She said a neighbor carried him to her apartment, and she drove him to a hospital.

On Thursday, both mothers said they plan to move. “This is just the kind of thing I’m trying to keep him out of,” the mother of the older boy said, describing him as a youngster who enjoys video games and playing with friends.

The younger boy’s mother said she has received approval for emergency housing away from Carver-Langston and is searching for a new place to live.

Meanwhile, she said, she checked her family into a hotel.

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