The Trace – Four-year-old LeGend Taliferro was asleep in the early hours of June 29, 2020, when a bullet tore through his room. It was meant for his mother, Charron Powell, and had been fired by a man who had been accused of assaulting her just days earlier. The shooter, Ryson Ellis, shared a child with Powell. After firing his weapon outside of their Kansas City, Missouri, apartment, a bullet passed through a sliding glass door and wall before striking LeGend, killing him. His mother said that LeGend had “loved” Ellis, who was arrested and ultimately pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. “He was a ball of joy,” Powell said of her son. “I want his legacy to live on.”

Three weeks after LeGend’s death, as the country faced a summer surge in gun violence following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Powell stood on a podium next to then-President Donald Trump as he launched a federal operation to send Department of Justice agents to nearly a dozen cities. It was named Operation Legend, in honor of Powell’s late son. The agents’ mandate was clear: Arrest violent criminals and take guns off the street.

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