The church pews were full at Lumumba Sayers Jr.’s celebration of life, but still people waited at the doors.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I was just told we are over capacity. We’ll deal with the fire marshal later,” said Kinshasa Sayers, an uncle and church elder. “Let ‘ em in!”

What the congregation of over 1,300 saw up front and center Sept. 9 was sobering. Lumumba Jr. was propped up in his casket in a white suit and tie as if he were standing before them, serene in death, his beard trimmed, and his gold championship mixed martial arts belt draped over his shoulder.

The young anti-gun crusader was not supposed to die from a bullet.

But at 3 a.m. Aug. 19 at on a Saturday morning, the 23-year-old was gunned down at 28th and Welton streets in Denver’s Five Points neighborhood. He risked his life defending his older sister, who had been shot minutes before, according to his father.

Lumumba “Heavy Hands” Sayers Sr. was in the Dominican Republic coaching a boxing match with WBC champion Michael Alivera when the phone rang too early for a casual chat. He had a bad feeling.

“Is my son alive?” he asked.

There was confusion. A nephew told him that Sayers’ daughter, Hawaii, was shot in the back and in the arm, and was in the hospital. Where was Lumumba Jr.?

Soon after, a Denver police sergeant called and said he was sorry, that

Little Lumumba died after a rush in an ambulance to Denver Health hospital, shot once in the chest. His sister, Hawaii, survived.

The bleak finality of Lumumba Jr.’s short, but remarkable, life shook Denver’s Black community to its core — but his packed memorial service was more about how he lived his life than about how it ended.

Fred Abrams was one of the first to speak and apologized for his off-the-cuff thoughts about the cousin he described as “a gentleman’s gentleman” who “worked on things within himself.” Said Abrams: “Cats don’t know how to have conversations and that’s why things happen like this.”

Manual High School football coach Ben Butler announced that the Thunderbolts dedicated their first game in honor of the running back who wore No. 28. In a tale with many other ironies, Manual won that game, 28-0.

For four hours, a sea of mourners in white suits, gloves, ruffles and hats listened as friends and family told stories about the young man’s huge personality, his love for dancing, clowning and banana cake. Some could barely speak from the grief.

“I’m so lost right now,” said one.

Still, the violence that took the young man simmered just beneath the surface.

It was present in the Aurora police cars that kept watch in the parking lot of Aurora’s Rising Star Missionary Baptist Church, and by private armed security guards in flak jackets, who searched every backpack, purse and pocket, necessary because, they generically explained, of “what happened.”

Sayers was the last to speak. He had stood by his son’s body for almost the full four hours.

He called on the community to have the courage to stand up to evil.

“How many of y’all are going to step away from your gang and hold the hood accountable for what they’re doing?” he said. “We’ve learned to sweep murders and assaults under the rug and hide these people in plain sight and they keep killing our kids. Who’s gonna hold the ‘hood accountable for what they’re doing to our kids?”

Silently, hundreds of whiteclad mourners got to their feet, many of them with their right arms up, their hands in a fist.

There have been no arrests nearly a month after Sayers Jr.’s death.

On Aug. 24, Denver Crime Stoppers offered $2,000 and asked for help in finding 24-year-old Tyrell Braxton, who was caught on halo camera wearing bright yellow pants the night of the incident. There might have been others involved, but Denver police declined to answer a Colorado Open Records Act request, citing “an ongoing investigation.”

Though no one but the police, the gunman, and Lumumba Jr. knows if he had a weapon that night, Sayers said his son did not own a gun and was not in a gang.

It’s a bitter pill for the father who reminded his son every day to stay out of the clubs and away from gang members.

“Thing is, my son knew I loved him. He used to say ‘ You ain’t gotta love me. My daddy does,’” said Sayers.

Glovez Up Gunz Down

The full name Lumumba Natamba Mohammed Sayers means “gifted man of destiny.”

The father and son were named for Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo — who gave his life during a coup in 1961 in the fight for national unity.

In 2015, Sayers built a community center in an unassuming building in Aurora and called it Heavy Hands, Heavy Hearts Center. The foundation’s aim was to pull kids off the streets with movie nights, Thanksgiving dinners, fitness classes, mountain camping trips and girl’s empowerment gatherings. Fundraising events were aimed at youth violence prevention.

As a teen, Lumumba Jr. followed his dad’s lead and created Glovez Up Gunz Down Get Your Heads Up in the Hood, a nonprofit organization which guided youths to ditch their guns and, instead, use their voices to solve their problems.

Danika “Honey Badger” Ramirez was a shy middle-schooler when Lumumba Jr. noticed she had a killer kick in the ring.

“A lot of the grown-ups, they didn’t want to work with me. I was little and I don’t think they expected much,” Ramirez said. Her face folded into a soft sob at the loss of her mentor. “It’s crazy how someone who was trying to stop violence ended up getting killed by it.”

Today, the Rangeview High School A-student is the threetime Mua Thai state champion at 115 pounds for the under18-year-old division. She has decided to continue kickboxing because even when he was tired, Lumumba Jr. never quit.

“That’s what I’m going to carry with me,” she said. “I’m going to make something out of myself.”

Birthday celebration undenied

The Sunday before Labor Day, on what would have Lumumba Jr.’s 24th birthday, Sayers retrieved his son’s body from the mortuary for a final tour through the streets — this time by horse and carriage.

Afterward, close friends and family gathered at the Heavy Hands Heavy Hearts Center, and danced a hip-hoppy Texas Two Step under yellow-andwhite balloons and ate strawberry crunch cake, Lumumba Jr.’s favorite.

A leftover cake still sits in the HHHH freezer, one piece missing because he always gave his dad the first bite.

Nearly a month after the worst day of his life, Sayers is broken but not down for the count. His moving and delivery business, which he was leaving to his son, is on hold. But the doors are still open at Heavy Hands Heavy Hearts.

“All the work they did. All the fights and all of the promotions, all of the arguments only for this young man to be felled by a bullet at 3 a.m. in Five Points?” said Terrence Roberts, Lumumba’s cousin.

Roberts, a former gang member- turned- community advocate, recently had his own story of gang life in the Denver hood published in a book and documentary called “The Holly.”

“Youth violence is a subject no one wants to talk about,” Roberts said. A lifetime of experience has taught him, he said, that no matter what color you are, domestic violence and poverty are at the root of why children end up choosing the quick fix of gang life over the safer alternative.

Lumumba Jr. had embraced the latter for himself. But in the end, he was human.

“Everyone knew there was heat. He shouldn’t have been out that night,” said his cousin, Corey Stokes, adding: “But it’s in our DNA.”

Roberts has heard the speculation on Lumumba Jr.’s killing, which runs the gamut from the idea that he was targeted out of jealousy to the theory that his death was an accident. Some speculate that he walked toward the gunman with a smile on his face ready to talk things out.

“No matter what kind of activist or preacher you are, that was his sister. Who knows what’s going on in his head,” Roberts said.

Heavy Hands Heavy Hearts

Large television monitors flank the walls in a therapy room at the Heavy Hands Heavy Hearts Center, where kids play video games and participate in therapy using sand and toys.

“This was my baby’s place to be,” Sayers said. A pair of black-and-blue Pumas and a set of headphones connected to a computer are where his son left them.

“My son used to say, ‘You think you’re a man because you got a gun in your hand? Nah. Everybody knows how to kill, but how many people know how to live?’”

Most people would say that Lumumba Sayers Jr. lived like a champion. Gloves up, he was undefeated.