By JAKOB RODGERS | jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com | Bay Area News Group

PUBLISHED: October 16, 2021 at 6:00 a.m. | UPDATED: October 16, 2021 at 3:10 p.m.

OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA – OCTOBER 13: Chalinda Hatcher, mother of Shamara Young, 15, poses for a photograph in Oakland, Calif., on Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021. Young was fatally shot during a ‘road rage’ incident on Bancroft Avenue becoming the city’s 109th homicide of the year. (Anda Chu/Bay Area News Group) 

Three gunshots echoed around Joshua Hatcher. The window of his car shattered next to him.

Then Hatcher looked right at his niece, Shamara Young. She wasn’t ducking, or trying to dodge the bullets flying into his passenger’s seat. The 15-year-old was just sitting there with a gunshot wound in her head as Hatcher struggled to keep driving.

“That’s when I kind of went hysterical — everything came to my mind at once,” Hatcher said. Cradling her body with his free hand, he hit the gas and drove straight to a hospital, where doctors confirmed what he already suspected.

Shamara’s death, on Oct. 6 — after a road rage encounter that stretched for nearly two miles across East Oakland — marked the city’s 109th homicide, a grim milestone that equaled last year’s number of killings, with nearly three months remaining in 2021. Like most of the homicides in Oakland, Shamara’s death remains unsolved.

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“It’s a lot to be able to accept, someone with such a reckless state of mind,” Hatcher said. “None of those bullets had my niece’s name on it.”

With homicides in Oakland up about 40% from 2019, the drumbeat of death across Oakland has left community leaders grasping for ways to end the bloodshed, while further stoking debate on the role of policing in the city. While last year’s spike in violence has leveled off in many other major cities, Oakland has become an outlier, with a homicide rate that continues to rise.

“We are at a boiling point, and it has completely spilled over in the midst of this pandemic,” said City Council person Treva Reid, whose district encompasses deep east Oakland.

The majority of murders this year have been on the east side, with about 60% occurring in the two police divisions that include the areas east of 35th Avenue and the Elmhurst and Eastmont neighborhoods, according to the Oakland Police Department. Last year, the nation’s homicide rate jumped nearly 30%, according to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In Oakland, the increase was about 40%.

That toll includes Shamara, who was shot near Bancroft and 50th avenues.

Outside her house, dozens of candles and flowers filled the sidewalk, resting below pictures of the girl flashing a “peace” sign and smiling at the camera.

Like many teenagers, Shamara was constantly on TikTok, always making dance videos, sometimes even while standing in line to check out at Costco, her mother, Chalinda Hatcher, said. She had more eclectic interests too: This past summer, she took a class on how to juggle while walking on stilts. And she was working on improving her grades at nearby Fremont High School, so that she could join the basketball team.

“If you were her friend, you weren’t her friend, you were her family,” Chalinda Hatcher said. “Everybody knew that when you were friends with her, you weren’t going to let her go. Because she loved with everything.”

Two weeks ago, Shamara’s mother had been planning her Sweet 16 birthday party at Dave & Buster’s, where the girl could enjoy arcade games with her friends.

Instead, Chalinda Hatcher spent Wednesday morning picking out a purple, unicorn-encrusted urn to hold her daughter’s ashes.

“When is enough, enough?” she said. “I try to wrap my head around it, but can’t imagine why someone would do this.”

Shamara had planned on becoming a forensic scientist, Chalinda Hatcher said, voraciously watching shows like “Criminal Minds,” “911,” and “Law & Order.”

“That’s why I know that her soul is not going to rest until we find out who did this,” Chalinda Hatcher said. “Because she would want us to find out. She doesn’t want to be another unsolved murder.”

So far, just 31% of Oakland homicides this year have resulted in arrests, according to police spokesperson Paul Chambers.

Such low homicide arrest rates are typical here — particularly in cases involving Black or Latinx victims, said Roxanna Altholz, a law professor and co-director of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at UC Berkeley. Oakland police made arrests in just 40% of homicide cases from 2000 to 2018, said Altholz, who authored a report on the issue in early 2020. That’s compared to a clearance rate of 58% in California and 63% across the U.S. in that same time period.

When so few people are arrested, the families of those slain can feel like victims themselves, Altholz said.

“It’s not just an issue about policing — it’s about supporting families that have experienced the worst tragedy that a person can experience,” Altholz said. “It impacts every facet of a life: family life, your ability to work and provide for your family and yourself, your spiritual outlook, your emotional wellbeing, every aspect.”

The fast-rising homicide rate comes as Oakland juggles calls among community activists for city leaders to enact more wide-ranging police reforms.

Oakland police Chief LeRonne Armstrong said the continued rise in violence is due, in part, to the pandemic disrupting violence prevention programs such as Ceasefire, which largely stopped operations last year amid the pandemic. Armstrong also pointed to the fact that more than 50 officers have left the department over the last five months — leaving fewer people to patrol the streets.

The department’s staffing levels have dipped so low that it could imperil revenues from the Measure Z parcel tax, which requires the city to employ 678 sworn officers before spending that money, aimed at preventing violence. As of Wednesday, the department had 684 officers.

Oakland have asked for the public’s help in solving Shamara’s murder, releasing footage of a car suspected of being involved in the shooting.

“This is not like what you see on TV — we really rely on the community’s help,” said Armstrong, imploring residents to share video and tips with detectives. “I do believe there is hope, though. The hope rests in the fact that we all want a safer Oakland. But that means that we all have to come together collectively.”

Shamara’s uncle, Joshua Hatcher, wishes more officers had been patrolling during the road rage encounter that left his niece dead. How, he wonders, did no officers see what was happening as the ordeal stretched for nearly 20 blocks?

In the week-and-a-half since those shots echoed in his car, Hatcher has second-guessed himself countless times. Being Shamara’s uncle, he always viewed himself as her “protector.”

“I’m trying to really figure out what I did to cause them to want to do this,” Hatcher said. “It wasn’t anything that I did.

“I feel so responsible, man. That’s what hurts me the most — is the fact that I wasn’t able to be there for her.”