DAVENPORT, Iowa - Barely 24 hours after a Davenport teenager was shot to death at a party, a friend is pausing to remember Ayana Culbreath.
"She went to school," recalled Kanesha Miller. "She was a good kid."
But Culbreath, just 15, was gunned down in a Davenport backyard in the 4200 block of Warren Street early Sunday.
"She didn't deserve it," Miller said.
Miller sat on a front porch still littered with broken glass on Monday morning.
"She was just nice," she recalled. "She was always smiling."
Violence at a backyard bonfire for some 20 guests stole that smile forever.
"Some people were down here sitting around the fire, but some were sitting up here," she gestured toward a deck.
Miller thought she heard fireworks around 12:30 a.m., then ducked on the deck.
"All I heard was gunshots and people screaming," she said.
"I just heard a lot of screaming and crying," added neighbor Mallory McGrath.
McGrath was inside her home during the incident.
"It was just something that happened," she recalled. "It's really, really sad."
First responders found Ayana Culbreath slumped along the fence line in the photo above.
"She was just right here on the ground," Miller said.
Survivors are left to wonder, why her?
"Just hate," Miller said. "It was hate, really. People don't like each other."
For Elder Daniel Teague, who directs the Boots on the Ground effort, the incident offers a painful illustration.
"Any time you have a dysfunctional family, you have a dysfunctional community," he said. "As you can see, this community is very dysfunctional."
Life was just beginning for Culbreath. She planned to attend Davenport Central High this fall.
"She was only 15," Miller concluded.
But at 15, a life ended early by gun violence.