All Things Crime Blog’s new contributor Eric Ruark has provided us with this staggering report on the recent rampant gun violence that is sweeping Baltimore.
by Eric Ruark
In Baltimore, it’s not even front page news. On Tuesday, July 2, 2013, the staggering stats of 36 people shot and 16 dead in one week only made it to the page 4 “Around the Region” section in the Baltimore Sun. By Wednesday morning, that number had jumped to 40 shot and 18 dead making Baltimore one of the most violent cities in the country. WBAL-tv reported that after factoring in population, Baltimore, Maryland is 10-times more violent than New York City.
This epidemic of unabashed violence began with a triple shooting Thursday morning about 1 a.m. on June 20th in which Andre Cox and Corey Gibson were fatally shot and an unidentified man wounded in the 2900 block of West North Ave. On Friday morning 5 a.m., June 21, 2013, Joshua Billingsley was fatally shot in the 900 block of Bennett Place. Later that same day, Andre Witherspoon was killed in the 900 block of Ducatel Street.
On Saturday morning at approximately 1:30 a.m. an 18-year old girl was killed and 4 others injured in the 700 block of North Kenwood Avenue. Another person was killed in the 5200 block of Cuthbert Ave. at 11:30 a.m. on Saturday. There was another shooting in the 200 Block of Dallas Court just before 4:30 p.m. on the same day. But even sunset didn’t stop the mayhem. There was another shooting just after 9 p.m. in the 500 block of East 26th Street and then another just before midnight in the 1400 block of Pennsylvania Ave. that left a man and a woman dead.
The clock had hardly rolled passed midnight when there was also a shooting around 1:30 a.m. on Sunday in the 5100 block of Arbutus Ave and one more just after 4:30 a.m. in the 5200 block of St. Charles Ave.
The 9th shooting of the weekend (not counting the two men killed on Thursday) happened around 9:30 p.m. Sunday also in the 900 block of Bennett Place where there was a reported 10th shooting around 11 p.m.
On Monday morning, policed tweeted that two more people were critically wounded in an overnight shooting in the 800 block of Whitmore Ave. Police also said that a man was injured in a shooting on the 4700 block of Alhambra Ave. around 1 a.m. Monday and two more shootings were reported in the 1600 block of Smallwood Street in west Baltimore and in the 200 block of South Broadway near Fells Point.
On Tuesday July 2, 2013 another three people were felled by gunfire, one killed and two others wounded in separate incidents. The first shooting was reported around 5 p.m. in the 4200 block of Pimlico Road where, according to WBAL-tv news, detectives said they found a man suffering from at least one gunshot wound to the chest. The man was taken to a local hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Also according to WBAL news, shortly before 12:30 a.m. on Wednesday the 3rd, officers were called to a shooting in the 700 Block of West North Ave. where they found a man who had been shot in the abdomen. A little more than two hours later, officers were called to a shooting in the 100 block if Denison Street where they found another man who had been shot in the stomach.
The reasons for the violence remains uncertain. One victim was robbed of her watch, money and iPhone, then shot in the leg. Another victim was in the bedroom with his girlfriend when two men armed with a semi-automatic handgun broke into the house and demanded their property. When they told the men they didn’t have anything, the thieves shot the man and fled. One of the victims shot just after 8:30 pm on Monday in the 300 block of McMechen Street in west Baltimore was giving directions to an elderly woman when he heard gunshots and felt as if he had been hit by a baseball bat.
If you plot all these shootings on a map of the city, you will see no pattern suggesting that the violence is centered in any one place. All sections of Baltimore appear to be equally affected.
No arrests have been made in any of the cases and the Baltimore City Police have reached out to both the State Police and the Federal authorities for help. At a public hearing, the Baltimore City Police Commissioner, Anthony Batts, told the Baltimore City Council Public Safety Committee his plans to use a “large-scale warrant initiative with federal marshals” and extend the patrol shifts as well as using “resources from DEA, FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.”
The only reason that the shootings have not resulted in even more deaths is the vastly improved treatment that ER teams are now able to provide to gunshot victims.
Currently it’s raining in Baltimore. Maybe the weather will do something to stop the killings since “stop the violence” marches and extra police on the streets haven’t seemed to have any effect.