LEONARDTOWN, Md. — The 16-year-old boy was at home taking virtual high school classes that day. He had done the dishes, taken out the recycling and finished a load of laundry.

       His parents, Michael and Kristee Boyle, left for work like they would on any other Tuesday.

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       But that afternoon in April last year, Michael Boyle received a phone call at work from his mother, Victoria Boyle, prompting him to rush back home. His stepson, Peyton Ham, had been shot. When Michael Boyle returned to his house on Hollywood Road, police cruisers blocked the street and his family couldn’t get to their front door.

       “I need to know if that’s my son,” Michael Boyle said he recalled telling officers that day. “I’ve got to get over there.”

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       Hours later, with his wife and sister-in-law stuck in the parking lot because they weren’t allowed into the hospital, they learned Ham was dead.

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       A Maryland state trooper responding to a 911 call at the home had fired more than a dozen gunshots at Ham, who police said had pointed a gun at the officer and was wielding a knife. Authorities would later learn Ham’s weapon was a BB gun, a replica of a Sig Sauer firearm.

       Prosecutors said in October that they would not file criminal charges against trooper Joseph Azzari in Ham’s fatal shooting, concluding the use of force was “reasonable under Maryland law.” Though Ham had already been struck after Azzari’s first shots, prosecutors said the boy told him “he wanted to die” and approached the officer with a knife before the trooper fired a second round of shots.

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       Nearly a year after his death, Ham’s family and their neighbors next door who witnessed the shooting said they still want to know why the second round of shots — what they call the “second shooting” — took place if the teen was already wounded. Family and neighbors maintain he was no threat while on the ground. The family is also troubled by the investigation, struggling with the conclusion from prosecutors that Azzari should not be charged and was justified in shooting Ham.

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       Most of all, the family said, the opportunity to get help for the teen, who before the shooting showed “zero signs” of being in crisis, will never be possible.

       “It just didn’t make any sense,” neighbor Allison Mills said of the “second shooting” she saw in her driveway. “Not at the time that it happened and still not now. I don’t understand why that had to happen.”

       ‘A cry for help’

       Though he was only in 10th grade, Ham knew he wanted to attend law school, his mother, Kristee Boyle, said. A member of the Model United Nations and mock trial teams at Leonardtown High School, he was inquisitive and loved to learn. His favorite subject was history.

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       Ham would often have sleepovers at his grandma and granddad’s, and the tightknit family hosted weekly dinners often.

       “He was so routine-oriented,” Kristee Boyle said. “School was his life. He was so excited and so ready to go back to school full time.”

       The coronavirus pandemic meant more virtual classes, and though Ham was late in turning in some work, he was still actively participating, Kristee Boyle said. The quarter hadn’t ended yet, and there was still time to boost some of his grades.

       Otherwise, there were no red flags that indicated the teen was struggling, his family said. The weekend before April 13, Ham had spent the night at his grandparents’ house, enjoying a big dinner, playing with the family dogs and watching movies.

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       “It was completely out of character for him, especially with someone that exhibited zero signs of being in crisis, that there was anything wrong,” Kristee Boyle said. “This is a kid that’s down here every day greeting me at the door, as I get home from work … ‘What’s for dinner? What can we make? I’ve prepped things for you already.’ He loved to cook.”

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       Even still, Kristee Boyle said she believes that Tuesday afternoon was “a cry for help.”

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       Ham picked up a phone and called 911 not once, but twice, police and prosecutors said. He reported “a suspicious man with a gun,” a call that drew a Maryland state trooper to his home.

       ‘Drop the knife’

       Azzari pulled into the driveway of the house next door at 1:26 p.m., prosecutors said, minutes after the two 911 calls from Ham. The trooper, who had come from the Maryland State Police Leonardtown Barrack just up the road, said he did not activate his lights or sirens so as “to not alert any potential suspect of his arrival,” according to a report from the St. Mary’s County State’s Attorney Office. As a result, the camera on board his cruiser did not activate.

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       According to prosecutors in a report explaining why they didn’t charge Azzari, Ham came from behind a parked vehicle at his home and walked toward the trooper pointing a BB gun, “a replica Sig Sauer P250 firearm.” Azzari, who police say at the time did not know Ham had a replica weapon, gave him commands to drop the gun.

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       Azzari then fired 11 shots, wounding Ham, and ordered him to the ground, according to prosecutors and police.

       Ham’s grandmother Victoria Boyle, who lives in a guesthouse on the Boyle property adjacent to the neighboring driveway, was in the kitchen and heard a “big noise” before rushing around the house to investigate, she said in an interview.

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       As she came to the front door, she saw it was her grandson. His hands were at his side, she said.

       She heard the trooper tell Ham, “You dropped the gun, now drop the knife.”

       Victoria Boyle repeated the commands to him, “just drop the knife,” as did her daughter, Kellee Boyle, who by this time was looking on from the front door of their home.

       In the house next door, Allison Mills had heard the gunshots along with her mother, Michelle Mills, and they went to a window.

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       Ham was on his knees, bleeding, Allison Mills recalled. Her mother took an iPhone Live Photo of the moment, which records a brief snippet of video, which was mentioned in the prosecutor’s report of the shooting. In the photo, Azzari is heard saying, “Put the knife down!” and circling Ham as police cars with sirens speed toward the home.

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       Prosecutors said Azzari approached Ham “to render medical assistance” after he noticed the boy was injured from the initial shooting. According to Azzari’s statement, Ham “removed a knife from his pocket and brandished it while beginning to stand back up.”

       Then, more gunshots.

       Some witnesses disagree with officials’ account that Ham was getting back up, and posed a threat, after he was initially shot. Ham’s family said he was already wounded and they argue there was an opportunity to de-escalate before a second round of shots needed to be fired. Allison Mills, the neighbor, said some of her testimony to the grand jury hearing by prosecutors was not included in the memo that cleared Azzari.

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       “I had spent my time sharing what had happened as well, and it was kind of lumped into my mom’s story,” she said. “It was like a paragraph for what we had said and yet we’d seen basically the entire thing that happened, besides the initial shots.” Allison Mills said Ham made a small movement while on the ground, but she did not see him getting up or approaching Azzari.

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       Maryland State Police (MSP), St. Mary’s County State’s Attorney Richard Fritz and Deputy State’s Attorney Daniel White did not respond to questions about the shooting. Azzari and the Maryland Troopers Association could not be reached for comment. But in the memo detailing why Azzari was not charged in the shooting, prosecutors said the trooper was in “fear for his life” and fired. In the memo, Azzari said Ham refused his commands to drop the knife, and Ham “stood up and approached” with the knife still in hand.

       According to police and prosecutors, Azzari responded in his MSP patrol vehicle and said the MSP did not equip him with a Taser or body camera.

       Justin Ramsdell, a George Mason University professor of psychology specializing in police use of force and crisis de-escalation, questioned why there was no Taser as a less-lethal option or policy on when to activate a dashboard camera.

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       For de-escalation, an officer can retreat from an individual with a knife while keeping a gun trained on them and creating enough distance between the two, he said.

       “The first interaction with the 11 shots, there’s very, very little that could have been done at that moment, if anything, to change it,” Ramsdell said. “But what happened after that, after those first 11 shots, that can be policy, that can be training, that can be equipment. None of which were present.”

       The family is now poring over Ham’s autopsy, hoping for more answers and a second look at the investigation. They also continue to wonder what drove him to suddenly call police to his home that day.

       “That has broke our hearts,” Michael Boyle said. “How did he keep all that turmoil inside? And how horrible that must have been for him to keep it.”