It was summertime. He had gotten off work at his new job at 4 p.m., then he ate dinner with his family and caught up with his mother on their porch.

At 16, he was looking forward; he wanted to provide for his 1-year-old daughter, Melody, and had plans to join the military.

At 9:30 p.m. on July 20, 2018, police responded to a report of a robbery at a Speedway convenience store on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Wilson, North Carolina. They found Luis Flores-Bravo suffering from a gunshot wound. He died at the scene.

Deep, steady beats pulse in the background as he enthusiastically raps and dances to his latest hit, “Heavy Night,” which has more than 21,000 views on YouTube.

His 4,235 followers on Instagram knew him as “Fat Daddy” and “Heavy Baby.” He spent a lot of time creating music videos with his friends. Outside the music realm, he was a brother and a father of three children.

Raydale Hill, 17, was shot outside a convenience store on West Grand Avenue in Oakland, California, on Sept. 13, 2018, at 12:17 a.m. He died at a hospital the same day.

After his stepfather died last year in their apartment complex’s parking lot, the young man was determined to protect his little brother and help his girlfriend raise her young daughter, even though he wasn’t the biological dad.

With the little girl about to turn 3, he spent a week looking for money to buy a scooter, her birthday wish, while struggling to find a job. He managed to raise the money for it. But he never got the chance to purchase it.

Jaquincy Jawan Ross, 18, was shot on September 23, 2018, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, just yards away from where his stepfather was shot.

He would have graduated in 2020. He had just had a baby, according to a family member.

His mother was at a loss for words. His cousin Eddie Moore looked at the bullet holes in the walls and shook his head, bewildered by how quickly his life was taken. “He wasn't supposed to be on this end," Moore said, referring to the court he lived on.

On Feb. 6, 2019, police found Dex Moore, 15, dead from gunshot wounds on the floor of an apartment in West Memphis, Arkansas. He is the second person shot and killed in the apartment complex in the past year. A 14-year-old has been charged with second-degree murder in Dex’s death.

He loved to box. A picture of him wearing black boxing gloves hangs in the local gym where he trained. In another photo, the gloves are off and a tattoo on his right hand shows the name "Angela,” for his mother.

He was a brother, cousin and nephew. By the time he was 18, he had two children. In a month, he would have turned 19.

Ricky Lamar Green, Jr., 18, was shot multiple times on Apricot Drive in Champaign, Illinois, on March 23, 2018. He died of gunshot wounds at Carle Foundation Hospital.

His girlfriend in the passenger seat, his infant son in the back. A recent high-school graduate, it was his first day of work loading trucks in Chicago.

He was “shy,” “mild-mannered” and he “doted” on his longtime girlfriend. “They were together literally all the time. You wouldn’t see one without the other,” according to his uncle, Sean Howard, a spokesman for multiple Illinois police departments.

Joshua Wright, 18, and his girlfriend, also 18, were shot and killed in a drive-by shooting on Feb. 5, 2019, in Markham, Illinois. “That the baby didn’t get hit is a miracle,” Howard said.

He dreamed of being a border patrol agent. Growing up in El Paso, Texas, he was surrounded by military bases like Fort Bliss and was aware of the high security stakes at the border.

He was in the process of turning his life around, working toward that goal. He wanted to be a role model for his baby son.

Ricardo Del Moro, 18, would not have the opportunity to fulfill that dream. On Sept. 14, 2018, Del Moro, along with his brother and girlfriend, was shot and killed outside an apartment building.

She was months away from being a mom.

At nearly 19 years old, she had moved out of her mom’s house and was working toward her lifelong dream of moving to Texas. At the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, she was taking classes to complete her nursing degree. “She was your average teen,” a family member remembered. “She liked to dress up, to do hair and makeup.”

Around 10:14 a.m. on July 17, 2018, a shot rang out from her boyfriend’s gun in a home in Glencoe, Louisiana, killing Nai’Asalyn Lasha Brown, 18, and her unborn child.

When he wasn’t attending Regional Alternative School, he was watching over his beautiful four-month-old baby girl.

His mother said he was a caring young man who spent most of his days with his daughter. A playful jester, he was someone who brought laughter and happiness to those around him, especially his mother. In his free time, he enjoyed rapping, playing basketball, or boxing.

On Sunday, June 10, 2018 at a backyard party on Orchard Street in Bloomington, Illinois, Steven Alexander Jr., 18, was shot and killed. He never got to experience his first Father's Day.

He was an “outstanding scholar” and a “tech-head, able to take anything apart and put it back together.” He loved to cook, loved to eat, and loved kids, including his own baby girl.

Because his mother wanted a better environment for him, they moved to a new neighborhood. He was close to obtaining his GED and had just secured a job at a movie theater. “He was doing what he was supposed to do.”

On May 14, 2018, he went back into his old neighborhood to attend a vigil for a friend shot days earlier. Kyle McGowan, 17, died after being shot in a South Chicago neighborhood.