Number 77: How Desiree Davis became Oakland's 77th murder victim for 2009

It was exactly a year ago today that shots rang out on a hot summer afternoon in North Oakland. By the end of the day, 17-year-old Desiree Davis would become Oakland's 77th murder victim for 2009.

Before she became murder #77, Desiree Davis was a survivor of a different kind of calamity – a disaster named Katrina. It’s been five years since that flooding caused an exodus from New Orleans. Desiree Davis and her family were among those who had to leave their destroyed homes to look for a place to start over. They landed in Oakland, and Desiree Davis enrolled at Oakland Technical High School where she took on the nickname "New Orleans."

But instead of finding a new life here, Desiree met her death on Oakland's streets. In this special report from KALW News, we will look at Desiree's unsolved murder, and what it tells us about the challenges of seeking justice and about Oakland's rampant street violence.

KALW's S. Howard Bransford has the story.

*     *     *

S. HOWARD BRANSFORD: Last summer, big earrings and skinny jeans were all the rage. Music fans were mourning the death of pop king Michael Jackson, and rappers like Drake and Lil’ Wayne were rising up to take his place. All over the Bay Area, car stereos blasted their songs about cars, clothes and cash-money.

That summer also marked a huge turning point in the life of 17-year-old Desiree Davis.

Four years had gone by since Hurricane Katrina forced her family out of New Orleans, and she was finally starting to make new friends in the Bay Area. One of them was Arianna Pharr, a classmate at Oakland Technical High School.

ARIANNA PHARR: Me and Desiree and Jimmie was always together, like every day.

In July, the three girls were ecstatic when Desiree bought a gold ‘97 Nissan.

JIMMIE HAYES: That was the biggest deal for all three of us.

Jimmie Hayes is another one of Desiree’s friends from Oakland Tech.

HAYES: We didn’t have to wait on the bus or nothing, we could just get up and go.

For the girls, Desiree’s car was a symbol of freedom. When they took drives together, they saw the future: college, better jobs and an escape from the dangerous streets of Oakland. Desiree wanted to be a veterinarian, Arianna a hair stylist. Jimmie wasn’t sure what she wanted to do, but the girls were pushing each other to stay on top of their grades.

HAYES: We were planning on going to San Francisco Community College and living together, trying to get an apartment together.

That gets us to Labor Day of last year. At around 5 p.m., the girls are in North Oakland visiting a friend. It’s still hot out – not as hot as Desiree’s old hometown of New Orleans, but almost. The girls walk out of a corner store toward 54th and Gaskill Streets, ice cream cones in-hand. Summer is just about to melt away.

At some point, the girls notice a group of boys down the street. Jimmie Hayes thinks the boys might be trouble, but she shrugs it off. The girls sit down on a nearby stoop to eat their ice cream.

HAYES: So we were all laughing and stuff, we was like, "That’s that one guy that got shot, and his girlfriend got shot." I was like, "We better go, we better get away from over here or we’re gonna end up getting shot," but we was thinking of it as a joke and we was laughing.

But it’s no joke at all. What happens next is unclear, even to witnesses, but this is what most people say: an armed man walks up to the group of boys, maybe a few yards away, and opens fire on everyone within range.

HAYES: I heard hecka gunshots. I saw all those people on the corner running toward us, and all I could think of was just run, just like everybody else, just run.

Neighbors say around two dozen rounds go off. Arianna Pharr says the scene was too chaotic to know how many.

PHARR: I don’t remember because I didn’t look back, I just kept running. I didn’t look back.

HAYES: It felt like I was running in slow motion, and all the bullets in slow motion, like I was in a movie.

Jimmie and Arianna take shelter in a friend’s yard down the street. Then they realize Desiree isn’t with them.

HAYES: I didn’t have my glasses on, so I didn’t know what was down there, but I saw the form of a body laid out on the ground. And I just kept thinking in my head, "Please don’t let that be Desiree, please don’t let that be Desiree." So we ran up to her body and we saw that she did get shot in her head.

That’s about when Lorenzo Franklin runs over to help. He preaches at a nearby church, and happened to be at a party in the neighborhood.

LORENZO FRANKLIN: I saw this young girl laying down face down, and you know, I kneeled down immediately at her foot, touched her leg a little bit to see if I could get some movement, and also at the same time, you know, praying within that God would do something for this girl, that God would somehow revive her, or use me to revive her.

HAYES: I had called my mom and I was screaming and crying to her, and that’s when the ambulance had came, but they didn’t even put her in the ambulance, they just left her body out on the ground. So I was thinking, I guess that meant that she had gone.

Franklin remembers the scene as Desiree died on that sidewalk along 54th Street, with the sun still in the sky.

FRANKLIN: There was a half-eaten ice cream cone just a few feet away from her body, you know, apparently she had been eating an ice cream cone. It was just so amazing, the details that you see in the aftermath of what took place.

The police arrived soon after.

GEORGE PHILLIPS: It’s a hard thing dealing with death, no question.

Sergeant George Phillips of the Oakland Police Department has been to hundreds of crime scenes, but this one hit close to home, he says, because of how much Desiree resembled his own daughter.

PHILLIPS: And so right away you have to separate yourself, you know, when you’re dealing with something like that.

Once the police arrived, yellow tape closed the crime scene. It was off limits, even to family members.

DRU ANN DAVIS: The police never called me and told me anything.

Dru Ann Davis is Desiree’s mother. She learned about her daughter’s murder through a vague phone call from a friend, and didn’t find the crime scene until three hours later.

DAVIS: When we got there, and we got out of the car, and we’re asking where Desiree was, this person that was there showed us her body down the street, and so we said, “Could we go be near her?” And they said, “No, you can’t do that, she’s considered a crime scene,” and I said, “But, you know, her soul might be there, we need to be there.”

Police officers still wouldn’t let them past the tape. They blocked the family from the scene, not wanting them to tamper with evidence. From that moment on, Dru Ann would have to learn to refer to her daughter as "Number 77" – the 77th homicide victim of 2009.

DAVIS: She was always Dezzie to us, or Desiree to us, but never a number.

One year has gone by, and Dru Ann is still waiting for news about Desiree’s case, grappling with confusion and overwhelming emotions.

DAVIS: We think she’s not really dead, like she’s not not going to come home. It’s too big for us to handle. I think the brain, or the mind, it protects itself. We know she’s dead, we know she doesn’t come home and go into her bed, but the enormity of it all is so frightening. That makes me go into panic attacks, and then rages. How could this happen to this kid who’s done nothing to no one? And deserves to be here?

This year, Arianna Pharr and Jimmie Hayes are still here, but those carefree days of cruising in Desiree’s Nissan feel far away. This was supposed to be another summer of fun and freedom, but instead it’s a time of mourning. Here’s Jimmie Hayes.

HAYES: After the whole death and everything I really started looking at life a whole different way. I kept seeing people laugh and giggle about little stupid stuff, and I’d be like, I just take life more seriously now, because it can all be taken away in a second.

It’s been a cold summer in Oakland, so cold some people say summer never came, and Jimmie and Arianna spend a lot of time alone in their rooms. Last summer seems distant now, and the girls are distant from each other too, yet they're still bound by the grief of their friend’s senseless death.

In Oakland, I’m S. Howard Bransford.

S. Howard Bransford is a reporter with the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. Part two of Desiree Davis' story can be found here.