Tiffany Hall at home in Washington.
Tiffany Hall scrunched on a chair in a dark room of her rented house in Northeast Washington, her knees bent to her chin. She rose only to light a cigarette from the gas flame on the stove, pushing through trash on the kitchen floor. She dropped ashes into an empty McDonald's bag that earlier held her breakfast.
Her oldest son is in jail, charged with a killing. Another is with her ex-boyfriend in Maryland. The District of Columbia claimed her third for foster care.
The dreams Hall had for herself and for her children have all but vanished inside this tiny house with few working lights. Letters threaten to cut off support. She fears eviction.
"I feel that all the people who wanted to see me defeated have won," Hall said.
Her breaking point came with a knife that D.C. police say her 19-year-old son, Jovante, used to fatally stab a 15-year-old boy in the neck at the Deanwood Metro station April 11. Police said the youths had an ongoing dispute.
Hall, 35, said in an interview she has been a good parent up against a series of obstacles that piled over the course of her life - pregnant at 15, ostracized from home, unable to stay in school and later involved in unstable relationships. She blames boyfriends for fueling neighborhood tensions that she says led to the stabbing.
Tiffany Hall shows off a photo of her son, Javonte, when he was a young boy in Washington.
Hall said she taught Jovante to defend himself but doesn't understand why he carried a knife. "Why didn't he just fight him?" she said. Hall didn't attend her son's first court hearing, and she said she has no plans to any future court appearances: "I got business to take care of on my own."
She did consider reaching out to the victim's mother, to "go and hug and cry on her shoulder." But, Hall said, "I didn't think she would accept that."
Now Hall is alone and scared. Certificates marking the achievements in her life - a high-school-equivalency degree and an emergency-technician license - are hidden away. She starts each day at a McDonald's with a breakfast sandwich and coffee, then wanders the streets completing Sudoku puzzles.
"I don't mean to keep crying, but I had a mean life," Hall said. "It was just mean. I wouldn't wish any of the events that took place in my life on anybody."
The teen who was killed, John Rufus Evans III, was from the District but had been living in Richmond, where his mother had sent him to escape the youths she said were after him. He returned April 11 for a court hearing on a robbery charge.
Police are seen outside the Deanwood Metro station in Washington after the fatal stabbing.
That morning, police said, Evans and Jovante Hall were, by chance, riding the same Metro train. They got off different cars at the Deanwood station, and Evans recognized Hall. Police said Evans "balled up" his hands into fists and told his brother to record. In court papers, police quoted a witness who said Evans threw the first punch.
The two fought, and police said Hall stabbed Evans, known as Johnny, when they reached the bottom of the escalator on the platform. Police seized the phone but said the video had been deleted - the younger brother claimed it was removed by accident. One gruesome image, though, made it to the Internet - a photo of Evans lying mortally wounded. Twitter lit up with cries for revenge, and with the suspect's nickname, "Vante."
Police arrested Hall the next day, charging him with second-degree murder. He has a court hearing scheduled May 20. The Public Defender Service, which is representing Hall, declined to comment, but in an earlier court appearance, his attorney raised the specter of self-defense.
Authorities said the killing stemmed from a dispute between two acquaintances, but they didn't elaborate. Evans's mother said, "I just know that boy didn't like my son."
Hall's mother described a complex narrative rooted in the combustive streets as well as within her own fractured family and the two men in her life - her boyfriend of 16 years who raised Jovante and her new boyfriend whom she met when she moved to Ponds Street. Tiffany Hall said her new boyfriend was close to the parents of teens who bullied Jovante.
Duane Cunningham, a youth counselor who spent 10 years in prison for selling drugs, described the neighborhood youths he sees as frustrated and said that after the killing, he worked to stem talk of retaliation. He said youths don't hunt their rivals but act when they see one.
"Then the score gets settled right then and there."
Tiffany Hall said her own childhood experiences pushed her to teach her sons to not back down from a fight.
For Hall, the problems began when she was bullied in elementary school. At first, she tried to ignore it.
"My parents raised me in church," she said. "They taught me to turn the other cheek and to look the other way. So I just let this girl beat me up. I felt if I didn't, God was going to get me. One day, I just got tired, and I fought her back. I felt victorious."
"It taught me to teach my kids to stand up for themselves," she said. "Don't let nobody walk over you."
Jovante was born two months after Hall's 16th birthday. She said her parents objected to the pregnancy, and she has been on her own ever since. Hall said Jovante's father is one of two former classmates, both of whom refused a paternity test. Hall's other relatives could not be reached for comment.
Hall dropped out of school and found her way to Covenant House, a youth shelter. In 2000, she earned her high-school-equivalency degree. A year later, she became a certified emergency medical technician and volunteered on an ambulance in Prince George's County, Maryland. Later, she became certified from Howard University to draw blood.
The training brought promise of a career but never turned into a steady job. At the same time, she said, her relationship with her boyfriend had become abusive. In applications for restraining orders, she accused him of punching her in the eye, slamming her into stairs and beating one of her younger sons. But she never followed through with charges, and he was never convicted. The man declined to comment.
Tiffany Hall moved to her current home in 2011, when Jovante was 14. The subsidized house was a step up. She painted the walls and hung pictures and her GED certificate. Jovante took his brother to the basketball courts, where the then-10-year-old could dream about being a Georgetown University Hoya. Jovante disappeared into the 700-acre expanse of Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens, steps from his front door, returning with frogs, snakes, turtles and once a duck.
Hall said she took Jovante to the dentist for braces, to the Smithsonian museums and on picnics. She enrolled him in Catholic school and made him get a summer job. She said he complained that he and his brother were taunted by neighborhood teens, that he was punched for wearing braces.
As his mother had in grade school, Jovante reached his limit. One day, when his brother ran into the house crying about being pushed on the basketball court, Jovante bolted from the house to do battle.
The boy he beat up was in a circle affiliated with his mother's new boyfriend. Hall said instead of sticking up for Jovante, her boyfriend warned her about "moving in here and being all tough."
Last year, Jovante Hall began getting into trouble with the law. He pleaded guilty to a weapons charge and assault, both misdemeanors, and was placed on probation, according to court records. He was arrested twice this year, before he was jailed on the murder charge.
His mother said she has lost all of her sons.
"I don't like a lot of drama," she said. "But drama comes to me because of the things I do."
© 2016 The Washington Post
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