Two weeks ago, someone was shot and killed a few blocks from my home.

He was walking home late at night. Died with his headphones still in his ears, less than a block from his home.

A mother heard the gunshot and left her home to find him laying in his blood, life already taken.

I know all of this through the app Nextdoor. Sadly, it is the closest I get to knowing my neighbors.

But without it, I would have known of neither the homicide, nor the memorial made in his honor.

I decided to walk past the memorial on my way home. I live near hospitals. Humans die there everyday. I don’t go to those memorials.

I walk up to see three people talking over the memorial. None of them knew the victim.

His family is not local. Neighbors who did not know him made the memorial. It is without pictures.

The three discuss the event, trying to piece together the news. One claims to have also been a target that night, but (s)he got away. We all mention how lucky (s)he is.

This homicide has brought the closest moment I’ve ever had with my neighbors.

More neighbors join the circle. They offer conflicting additional details. Heresay, official and unofficial police comments, and news commentary mix to alter our collective understanding of reality.

As we stand there, a headphone wearing young man crosses the street to avoid walking by us. He stares, but does not stop to join our ragtag reception. He looks like I do most days: not concerned with what is happening here, too busy to engage. Checked out.

I find myself at peace with my neighbors. I am standing two feet from where the victim’s body was found. The motive of the homicide is not known. The victim was not robbed.

This could have been my memorial.

We are partially standing in a narrow street. A line of cars at the end of the block begin to rapidly accelerate at us.

We move rapidly to get out of the way. From one of the car windows, a bottle is thrown in our direction, shattering and spilling fluid in the street.

They pause at the next corner, then drive away.

I stand there, emotions heightened by the memorial, adrenaline surging from the act.

They could’ve been kids trying to show they are tough. Or it could’ve been people who knew more about this death than our ragtag group did. Either way, the message was clear.

A member of our ragtag group suggests we disassemble. We do.

I walk home. My anger, fear, and sadness meld and fester.

I try to consider this situation as one of many other problems I’ve solved before. I break down the questions. Why would people care so little about life? How can we improve this neighborhood so there are no memorials in the first place? How do we get all people engaged in society in a way that benefits us all?

My thoughts clear.

Those guys get it. This is their turf. If it gets bad enough here, I’ll leave, just like everyone else.

When one of theirs was slain, I did not stop by the memorial.

The prosperity that has reached in the Bay Area did not reach them. This is a place with mistrust grown through decades of abuse, deception, neglect. While people should own bad actions, we can’t ignore the context driven by bad environments.

No one asked me to solve their problem. This is not my neighborhood.

But I look forward to too much in life to die with my headphones in.

I know I’m not going to solve the problems of marginalized groups this evening at my desk. But if we ignore these issues it is to our own peril.

Thousands of people are shot and killed daily. This is the first time I visited the memorial of a homicide victim I never knew. A neighbor.

We are all neighbors. We should visit all of our memorials. We should have less memorials.

We are all in this together.