It started on a wretched, cold, rainy night in January when two young friends were shot to death while sitting in a car in the parking lot at the Wedgewood Village Apartments complex.

Their unsolved homicides are believed to be connected to a robbery, Columbus police homicide detectives say. One of the two victims, Jawuan Lamont Wade Reynolds, 22, was a West Side rapper who went by the name Fam Staxx. Before he died, a video he posted on YouTube had the eerily prophetic title "Killumbus."

Homicide detectives have investigated three other fatal shootings at the sprawling complex on the Hilltop that claimed five other lives in 2017. The seven slayings at the apartment complex last year make it the deadliest location in the city's deadliest year on record.

And yet, there are glimmers of hope.

It has been relatively quiet since the seventh homicide at Wedgewood occurred on Aug. 4, when Cody Virgil Nichols, 22, was found fatally shot in the hallway of an Eakin Road unit.

Scores of children participate in after-school, homework-help programs and newly formed Girl and Boy Scout troops. More Somali residents at the apartments are enrolling in English-language classes.

And on a recent Sunday afternoon, Columbus police officers helped teenagers who, along with residents, organized a cleanup of buildings in the complex.

Homicide detectives have charged four people in connection with the July 19 slayings of Abdul Cadir Ali Yussef, 19, and Mohamed Ali Mohamed, 26, said Sgt. Jeff Strayer, third-shift homicide squad supervisor. Strayer said there doesn't appear to be a pattern to the seven homicides at Wedgewood Village.

A large drug bust during the summer pulled Hilltop dealers off the street, and some of them had been plying their trade in the complex, said Columbus Police Commander Scott Hyland, who oversees the Hilltop neighborhood. Hyland said he has shifted resources to increase patrols of the Wedgewood grounds.

But police officers can do only so much to solve the multitude of issues revolving around Wedgewood, Hyland said.

"What's going on out there is bigger than us," he said.

Many parties are trying to get a grip on the challenges at Wedgewood Village. And Hyland said it is through the efforts of many that crime is down and there are tangible improvements in life.

Hyland said the complex's manager, Jim Fogler, and Wedgewood Middle School Principal Diane Campbell deserve recognition for their efforts to go beyond their jobs and make life better. And Zerqa Abid, through her organization, My Project USA, has "made it a point of doing everything she can to enhance the quality of life there," Hyland said.

Those looking from the outside might get the wrong impression, Abid said.

"I think in Wedgewood Village, there is a majority — 95 percent — that are really good people, but they are trapped," she said.

She said many of the crimes are caused by outsiders who use the complex as a staging area.

Then, there are the unique challenges confronting the immigrant Somali families who live in the complex. It is hard to get an accurate count of how many live in the flat-roofed, red-brick apartments. The 684 units stretch along more than a quarter-mile of Wedgewood Drive between Sullivant Avenue and Briggs Road. And there are at least 1,500 — and possibly as many as 2,000 — children in the complex, Abid said.

The average Somali family has seven children, and some have as many as 11, Abid said.

Many of the families are one-parent families in which the mother works outside the home, sometimes leaving children unsupervised and vulnerable. "That's a huge challenge," she said.

Abid started My Project USA in 2014 to deal with the issues of human trafficking, drugs and domestic violence — especially in how they affect Muslim families. Through her project, she has gained a greater understanding of what is going on at Wedgewood Village.

For years, the complex had offered some of the lowest-priced units on the Hilltop. It was known as Westgate Manor when it was built between 1953 and 1955 on what then was the edge of the Hilltop.

When Hyland started as a patrol officer in 1988 on the Hilltop, he became familiar with Wedgewood.

"Ever since I can recall, Wedgewood had a higher rate of crime. Poverty was always more evident there," Hyland said.

Most of the tenants at Wedgewood Village receive rent subsidies from the federal government because they live at or below the poverty rate, Abid said.

A large number of the Somali residents who live in the complex are from the Bantu tribe, who were persecuted and marginalized in their homeland and whose culture and language differ from the culture and language of other Somali refugees who settled in Columbus, Abid said.

"They did not receive the resources that might have been given to the rest of the Somali community in Columbus," Abid said.

Abid said she believes the answer to turning the situation around lies with those who live in the community.

"You have to empower the community itself. They have to come into the change, and they have to do it themselves," she said.

My Project USA operates a thrift shop, called My Deah's, along with its offices at 3036 Sullivant Ave. More than 100 families — about 65 percent of them from Wedgewood — regularly visit on Saturdays to get food from a pantry that operates out of the thrift shop.

Abid has tried to address issues she has encountered during her work there. For example, a recent effort was launched to teach residents how they can contact police to anonymously report illegal activity they see at the complex, Abid said.

Abid said she emphasizes to women that, "for their family's life to improve, you have to learn English," and more English classes have been launched.

My Project USA and the Girl and Boy Scouts are sharing a $25,000 grant from the city of Columbus to help organize youth activities at the complex and start troops. A soccer team for boys also is being organized, Abid said.

In October, a group of youth leaders at the complex held a retreat at Camp Lazarus in Delaware County. One result was a weekend cleanup event at the complex.

Samira Mohamud, 17, who has lived in the complex for six years, said the cleanup was a positive event and impressed residents.

"People really appreciated that police officers came out, because they usually only remember them coming out if something bad has happened," Mohamud said.

jwoods@dispatch.com

@Woodsnight