On a night in late June, Carla Walton lighted a candle where a childhood friend had been gunned down the previous day. Walton didn’t intend to stay long at the sidewalk vigil in Long Beach. She had to be up the next morning to bury another friend — a young mother who’d been shot dead while waiting at a red light in Compton. Her sadness over the bloodshed had boiled over into anger. Walton called her daughter earlier in the day “just ranting — ranting about gun violence,” her daughter recalled. “She was just going off.” The violence circling Walton’s life wasn’t finished. A man heckled the mourners at the vigil, provoking a confrontation. He and four people in the crowd pulled out guns and opened fire. Two bullets hit Walton. She died in a hospital later that night.