Wallace’s daughter, 17-year-old Jamahri Sydnor, was shot on the afternoon of Aug. 10, 2017, when a stray bullet shattered her car window and struck her in her head. The graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School in upper Northwest Washington, who was less than two weeks away from her freshman year as a communications major at Florida A&M University, died two days later.
At a trial this week for two men accused in the killing, federal prosecutors alleged Jamahri was an innocent victim, driving her 12-year-old nephew home from the barbershop when two people began firing gunshots wildly as part of a long-running battle between two Northeast Washington gangs: the Langston Park Crew and the Saratoga Crew. Prosecutors called Wallace, who has since retired after nearly 32 years with the D.C. police, to testify about how she rushed to the scene after hearing her daughter had been shot.
Wallace said she saw Jamahri’s car behind yellow crime-scene tape draped around trees and streetlights as colleagues held her back.
“I just kept asking: ‘What’s going on? What’s happening?’” she said.
Wallace described Jamahri as her “baby” — the youngest of her four children, going by the nickname “Jammi.” As she spoke, one juror in the front row bowed and shook her head. Several of Wallace’s family members, including Jamahri’s father, Jerome Sydnor, wiped away tears and moaned.
Charged with first-degree murder in the case are James Mayfield, 23, and Robert Moses, 23. Their defense attorneys argue that they are innocent and that prosecutors’ case hinges on the unreliable account of a man who admitted being involved in the killing.
That man, Philip Carlos McDaniel, 26, talked for hours with investigators. Authorities said he admitted driving Mayfield and Moses to and from the neighborhood where the shooting took place in a gold Honda with New Jersey license plates and tinted windows. Authorities said McDaniel told them Mayfield and Moses shot indiscriminately into the intersection of Saratoga and Montana avenues as an act of revenge against the Saratoga Crew for an earlier incident. Prosecutors said the Saratoga Crew had been in a generations-long feud with the Langston Park Crew, of which they said Mayfield and Moses were a part.
Panic-stricken residents tried to run and dive on the ground for safety. In addition to Jamahri, three bystanders were also injured. Jamahri’s car crashed into an SUV. According to an arrest affidavit, when an unnamed witness confronted Mayfield about shooting the college-bound teenager, Mayfield responded, “She got in the way.”
“Twelve shots ripped through that intersection. No one knew what was happening,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah C. Santiago. “None of the victims had anything to do with this rivalry. They just happened to be there.”
Wallace recalled her daughter phoning her just minutes before the shooting. She testified that she took the call in the parking lot of the Wegmans supermarket in Prince George’s County, Md., and her daughter ended their conversation with her standard goodbye: “Okay, love you lots. Love you bunches.”
Jamahri was less than eight blocks from home. But about five minutes later, Wallace said, she received another call from a family member. Jamahri’s nephew had rushed to his grandmother’s house and told relatives of the shooting, and they passed the news on to Wallace.
“I was screaming: ‘What’s going on? What happened?’” Wallace testified. She said she frantically tried calling her…
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