Life Now for Mom of 8-Year-Old Killed in Drive-By Shooting

All we heard was everyone running towards the house and I was the last person to enter the house. All I heard is PJ, PJ, get up, my son was shining in his head. This is where eight-

year

-old Peyton Evans, affectionately known as PJ, was shot. and

killed

the mother of the eight-

year

-old boy tells us that he was having dinner playing video games with his cousins ​​when the bullets started flying towards his apartment the

shooting

happened outside here but the bullets went through at least two apartments and this eight-year-old boy PJ Evans , one year old, was the only person he hit.

My name is Tiffany Evans. I'm from the DMV area. I am the mother of Peyton John Evans, better known as PJ. It was a normal day, um, it was literally a week before school started. he had a fight with his soccer team pj he played to the end when I say he played to the end he played a game he had never played before he was crushing everything yeah it was to the point where the kids were like damn it play don't look at him I was on my way walking to the car I was just talking trash like mom, you saw me, I was, I was crushing them, man, they were soft, man, they were so I was like, oh yeah, man, he was like, yeah, mom, I'm telling you. man, as if he was about to have a good season, my partner welcomed us to the house with tacos because it was Taco Tuesday, he took the first bite, it was a salmon taco, it was fried salmon inside the quesadilla taco, He said, damn it. this taco destroyer I said really I said it's good that's how he likes it a horrible road that's good for tacos so she gave me my taco and I took a bite I said oh no he wasn't lying this joint is good so I gave it to him for her, she bit it a couple of seconds later, I went out on the porch and that's when my partner, my cousins ​​and my nephews were sitting outside and we were sitting on the porch, relaxing, laughing, talking and literally everything. what we heard was that it was like probably like 30 bullets just went off so I grabbed her, threw her on the ground, covered her, my nephews and everyone got on the ground and then the last shot hit the window and the window shattered. , that's when they stopped

shooting

, so we left. in one house everyone was running inside the house and I was the last person to walk in the house all his pajamas pj get up my son was shot in the head so I went into the house for the last time my son is sitting literally five feet away of me his with his head bent on the table, with the cue in his hand and he landed on the controller, the PlayStation controller and I just grabbed my son and picked him up when I said he had the strength of Hercules, I picked them up and they I put them on the ground and continued praying for them.

I'm like God, I can't lose my baby and everyone was calling the ambulance and everyone was screaming like, come on, Pete, let's go in peace, I'm trying to do CPR, I'm trying to breathe through his mouth, he was. He wasn't breathing, he wasn't breathing and he probably he took the ambulance probably like 10 minutes to get to me and I'm just like, why is it taking so long? It felt like an hour and um, when they got there, they put my son in um in the bed took him in an ambulance and I told my partner when I came out I said my son was gone I said they didn't have lights in the ambulance I'm not. stupid I knew my son was gone All the way to the children's hospital in Washington DC I kept praying and kept saying God please forgive my son when I got to the hospital the doctor came to see me and told me I did the right thing. best I could to do what I could. but the way they shot him in the head it's like it was a main part of his brain and my son was laying on the table, he left after that, I stayed with him for a while, I was just talking to him, loving them, kissing. smelling them it's the worst day of my

life

my mom her favorite lady called her every morning when she woke up she called her grandma everyone is still hurt it's still a nightmare for everyone he was the

life

of the party animal so everyone loved him when he was here these These are just some of his teams that he played with and this was his last team that he won a championship with and this was his last coach and this is his best friend.

They've been playing soccer together since he was three, so that was his godfather. His teammates really took his death very seriously, like I said, they depended on him because he was the big man in the middle, so he made sure that all the running plays were made, so the his team really took to it. It's hard, you know, to deal with him passing away, especially seeing him at a football game and 20 minutes later he's

killed

. My oldest son, he is taking it very hard. My six-year-old son watches his funeral literally like any other day on his iPad.

He knows. how to pick it up he picks it up and watches the funeral cries tiffany she was a sweetheart and we have served a family before her and her entire family we are grateful for our services my name is wes chavis iii i' I am a licensed mortician and funeral director and I am the owner of Compassive Serenity Funeral Home here in Clinton Maryland but we primarily serve the black community, we do quite a few homicides because of the area we are in close to DC where the homicide rate has increased, you don't know what to say to the people when they keep coming back to you, we have so many families that have come to us three or four times in a year, sometimes I do a cookout at my house with families like that because you just get tired of seeing them at funerals and you feel bad .

We want to give the family a completely new funeral service experience. We want you to know that we really care. We did our best to represent your loved one on this day. this day was your day and we are going to make it a great day for you my son's funeral was not a funeral it was a celebration from beginning to end friday september 9, 2021 peyton james is declared everyone is full , my son, that's how a boy hurt him like all my friends in the circle. I was the only one who had a biological child in my circle who was our son.

This man had several fathers. You know what I'm saying, everyone thought. PJ was his son, so I wanted to give everyone a chance to love him one last time when I saw my son for the first time in a casket after Wes did his job. I'm like a friend, he looks like my son, no. nothing different when a loved one knows that the deceased has gone through a trauma that caused death whether it was a victim of a gunshot or a motorcycle accident and a vehicle accident and tells us that we know we are going to have a closed casket because this happened , this happened, but I tell you, ultimately it is your decision whether we have the casket open or closed, but I would appreciate it if you would give me the opportunity to do what I do and introduce you to your loved one and then you can make a decision if You want to keep the coffin open. or closed something happened to my loved ones I want to see them at their best so my son was shot in the side of the temple so they didn't shoot him where it distorted his face the thing in his pajamas got in his ear there it was no there's a big exit wound, so it wasn't really difficult to fix his wound.

I used some wax and put some makeup on it and her hair and it was totally hidden. Restorative art is about recreating the natural shape and color and that is what we do when we restore the body if it is any structural damage we recreate the structural damage and create the proper shape and the proper color it looked like it was asleep it looked like it be at peace hey darling, I miss you long live pj, that's what they call him the big man the field he was always the biggest kid on the field I made sure his team was good um his teammates I wanted to make sure they had things that They honored my son when they walked on a soccer field I bought all the kids on his team when he passed new jerseys and I bought them soccer bags it's all dedicated to PJ so everything has led PJ or long life to the 21 because 21 was his favorite number, I definitely love you guys, you definitely felt the heat because again, like my son, he passed away 20 minutes after he was with his teammates and Connor was hard on them, I didn't.

They understood, as if we were on a soccer field with them and now that he was gone, they took it very badly, but they loved me, they loved me. They and I still do it and I appreciate them, you know, those were my children for life. My ultimate goal in honoring my son is to basically give back to young people. My son's ninth birthday just passed on February 14, 2022, he would have turned nine years old. I donated tickets and stuff to kids whose parents couldn't afford the sneakers I threw for my son's birthday, so I paid to get the kids into the party.

I wanted to have all the kids in one place, just have fun and honor my son because he wasn't here to celebrate his birthday. Life now wakes up every day to go to work. I make sure to go down to school every day, although it is essential if I can't take him. to school I probably feel some kind of weight that's our time to bond it's our time to talk you know what I say the whole way to school we talked about pajamas or we talked about something he sonic or something he talked about He's only six, so you know, the conversation is mainly about toys and things he wants you to buy, it's a little difficult, my partner, she wants to do something for my birthday this year, I turned 35 in August and I think that I don't even want to do it.

My son is not here to celebrate his birthday, what is that to me? But I try to enjoy life as much as possible. I'm just trying to relearn myself. I have built my life for the last eight years being a mother and trying to be everything. Because of him I got lost, you know what I'm saying, so just relearning who I am as a person,