Before the bullets pierced the car Roderick Travon Godfrey was in, before his best friend carried his body toward the front door of his mother’s Oakland home, and before the 19-year-old died in an alleyway, failing to make it inside, he had spoken out against the gun violence that has often overwhelmed his city.

Months before his death in a double homicide Monday, Godfrey was a panelist at a gun violence town hall hosted by Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland.

The former honor roll student who graduated from McClymonds High this year and went by his middle name of Travon, or just “Tra,” lamented at the January event that the shooting deaths of several friends had made 2015 “probably the worst year of my life.” He recalled as well the time his brother was injured in a shooting, and he saw his mother weep with pain.

“I don’t want to put my mama through that,” Godfrey said in a video from the town hall. “I’m only 19. I lost nine friends to guns, and five of them didn’t even see the age of 18.” When he stopped talking at one point, too emotional to continue, Lee patted him on the back.

This week, as police sought to solve the slayings in the Longfellow neighborhood of North Oakland, the congresswoman offered condolences to his mourning family while criticizing loose gun-control policies in a Facebook post.

“Sadly, yesterday Travon lost his life to the senseless violence he was working to prevent,” Lee wrote. “It’s a disgrace that Congress has done nothing on common sense gun reform. My thoughts and prayers are with the family of Travon during this difficult time.”

Godfrey had told the crowd at the town hall that, at first, he was hesitant to show up at Taylor Memorial United Methodist Church. It was 2 miles away from home and near the spot where a friend had been shot.

But he would end up dying outside of his own home, in an attack that police have thus far said little about, citing the sensitivity of the investigation. It happened around 10:15 a.m. Monday on the 700 block of 39th Street, less than two blocks west of the MacArthur BART Station.

After the city’s ShotSpotter gunfire-detection system sounded an alert, officers arrived to find Godfrey and another man suffering from multiple gunshot wounds and a sedan riddled with bullet holes, said Lt. Roland Holmgren, head of the homicide unit.

The second victim was identified by friends and family as Deante Antonio Miller, a 19-year-old known by the nickname “Peek a Boo” and one of Godfrey’s best friends. Godfrey’s best friend — the one who tried to carry him home — was in the car and somehow wasn’t wounded.

As of Wednesday, Oakland had 73 homicides this year, not including cases deemed to involve self-defense. The city still has one of the highest per-capita homicide rates in the state, though the bloodshed this year may mark an improvement from last year’s 83 killings — and a far cry from the 145 homicides in 2006.

Kharyshi Wiginton, who is a manager at the Alternatives in Action after-school program in Oakland — and had convinced Godfrey to speak on the antiviolence panel — said the critical task now is to make a senseless killing mean something. She said the first steps include getting idle youth employed and guns off the streets.

“There’s a lot of irony, and I think it’s not by chance Travon was the one who spoke on the panel. We have to use his life to really make an impact on gun violence,” she said Wednesday. “This gun violence is a result of systemic oppression and poverty and the violence that our community experiences. It exists because of that. There has to be a multilevel approach to solving it.”

Godfrey’s surviving friend is Chance Bell, also 19, and he was one of a few dozen people who gathered the next afternoon beside a makeshift memorial on 39th Street that had formed for Godfrey and Miller. He said they had been the “three amigos for life.”

Candles, roses, teddy bears and photos stretched across the front of Godfrey’s home. An old “Get well soon” balloon made way for new balloons that read, “You are special.” Bell sat on the sidewalk, legs outstretched, staring at the memorial.

“It don’t feel real,” he said aloud, not seeming to address anyone. “I tried calling his phone this morning.” He fell silent and started shaking his head.

The three young men, Bell said, had made plans Monday to go shopping at a San Francisco mall. They drove to Godfrey’s house to get his wallet, but they didn’t make it out of the car before they heard the shots. Bell said he didn’t see who had fired. No words were exchanged.

Godfrey made it out of the car, wounded, before he fell and Bell caught him, trying to carry him.

“I couldn’t do nothing. I felt helpless, useless, powerless,” Bell said. “I seen the life leave from his eyes.”

When word of their deaths reached McClymonds High on Monday, much of the student body walked out in grief.

On Tuesday, the door to Godfrey’s house stayed open from the afternoon past nightfall. Family poured in and out, sharing fried chicken and discussing funeral arrangements. In the living room, next to the TV, a wall of certificates showcased some of Godfrey’s accomplishments.

One was from the state Legislature, recognizing he had been awarded the Oakland Promise scholarship. Another celebrated his Brotherhood Award from the city’s pioneering African American Male Achievement project. Above Godfrey’s certificate for keeping a 3.5 grade-point average this spring was an award from the Boys and Girls Club recognizing his high school graduation.

Godfrey had planned to attend Chabot College in Hayward in January, but was working at UPS in the meantime to save money for school, said his mother, Teresa Jackson.

“He was responsible. He was driven,” Jackson said with tears in her eyes. “He had a future.”

Just a few blocks away, at Martin Luther King Jr. Way and 30th Street, another memorial grew in front of the home of Deante Miller’s grandfather. The slain young man’s mother, Annette Miller, stood outside.

Her son, she said, was an athletic teen who had played baseball, basketball and football. The youngest of four siblings, he liked math and started working part time at FedEx after graduating from McClymonds High in 2015, she said. He got the name “Peek a Boo” from his grandmother, because when he was born he kept blinking his eyes.

“He was a good guy,” Annette Miller said. “He wasn’t one of those people, you know? Him and Travon didn’t deserve this.”

Her son, she said, was sometimes in the wrong place at the wrong time. In May 2015, he suffered minor wounds in a shooting that killed 17-year-old Oakland resident Edward McGowan. Police arrested Miller shortly after the shooting, but he was released and not charged, authorities said.

Teresa Brooks, a longtime family friend, said Godfrey, Miller and Bell were inseparable and even chose to dress in the same style.

“They did everything together. They always looked out for each other,” she said. “They was some loving little kids.”

But now, the young men who called themselves “swag,” short for students with goals, are down to one member. Godfrey started the year mourning the friends he had lost to gun violence, and now Bell is in the same position.

“I’m blessed to make it out alive. I just feel lonely now,” he said. “What’s the point of being a trio if you’re by yourself?”

Jenna Lyons is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jlyons@sfchronicle.com

Twitter: @JennaJourno