He was stabbed a few blocks from where he grew up in Marshall Heights, while returning home from a construction job. His mother believes he got into an argument that quickly grew violent.
No one else had been killed as of Monday evening.
“It doesn’t matter at all until we get that number to zero,” said David Bowers, the founder of a group called No Murders D.C. “It’s good news we have gone six or more days without a homicide, and the challenge is how do we get to seven, and then 10.”
Bowers added, “The bad news is all the people killed up to this point.”
Fenner’s mother, Moanick Fenner, had no time on Monday to contemplate statistics. She shuttled between the coroner and the funeral home, struggling to organize the service for her 29-year-old son.
“It’s frustrating, period,” said Fenner, who is 54 and works as an administrative assistant in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “What makes these young people so violent? Why are they so angry? Back in the day, you would get into a fight and go home and start over again. People don’t do that anymore.”
This is not the longest interlude between homicides in the city in recent months. Twice this year, the District has gone nine days without a killing. But summer months are typically the most deadly, and it follows a particularly violent stretch, with 19 people shot in five days last month.
An 11-year-old boy was among the victims of eight homicides reported during that period. The killings prompted the District’s police chief and mayor to speak out against what they said is easy access to illegal guns and a tendency for petty disputes to turn violent.
Every year, police chiefs across the country have to answer for rising homicide counts or explain why violent crime dropped. There are few simple answers to a complex issue. The city didn’t reach 100 killings until the end of August last year, and not until the end of fall in 2017. The city didn’t reach the mark at all in 2012, when 88 people were killed. Three years later, 162 homicides were recorded.
D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham declined to comment for this article.
Fenner said her son graduated from now -closed Spingarn High School and worked construction jobs, most recently at a building on the campus of Howard University. He was working toward his commercial driver’s license.
“He had a difficult life,” Moanick Fenner said, noting she suspected too late he had developmental problems that were never addressed in school. He lived with his mother in the house he grew up in and spent free time with his cousins.
She said her son was sometimes quick to grow frustrated. “His patience is so thin,” she said, wondering whether that played a role in the stabbing, which occurred about 9:45 p.m. in the 5000 block of Bass Place SE. No arrest has been made.
Fenner said she was home but didn’t learn that her son had died at the hospital until the next morning. He didn’t have identification on him, she said, and “nobody knew who he was.”
His mother said her son “was so funny” and “he wanted to make sure everyone was okay. He also was a person who wanted to tell everyone what to do, especially his sisters.”
Fenner also said he lacked street smarts. “He trusted everybody,” she said.
Pierre Fenner had two adult sisters who work as government contractors. His younger brother died three years ago of natural causes at the age of 15.
“I had four kids,” Moanick Fenner said. “Now I only have two. That is so difficult. I just hope nobody else gets killed.”