Throughout her 23 years in Cherry Hill, Taneal Munson has become familiar with the sound of gunshots. So have her sons, ages 6 and 8. But Monday night, just as the boys had finished their evening bath, never had the family heard them so close, so loud.
"My sister yelled from downstairs, `Get the kids and get down on the floor!'" Munson said. "It was like a big pop. I knew it was a gunshot. Fireworks don't sound like that."
Yesterday, family members broke the news to the boys - the gunshot had struck and killed Edward Smith, 14, known affectionately in the neighborhood by his nickname, "Milkman." Munson's 6-year-old, Julius, choked back tears, already conditioned to project a hardened exterior.
Of the six homicides in Baltimore since the start of the year, two have been on Munson's street - the 800 block of Bethune Road, home to identical rows of squat brick buildings making up Cherry Hill Homes. Yesterday, yellow police tape separated a desolate courtyard from a well-worn playground, a few buildings over from Munson's, as a gust of snow flurries fell all around.
Two months ago, police and community residents expressed optimism that Cherry Hill, a neighborhood troubled by drug turf wars and rival youth gangs, had turned a corner. Homicides were down 50 percent from the previous year, from eight to four, and nonfatal shootings were down from 28 to seven by November.
But this year's shootings have revived fears among residents who say they worry the neighborhood's on-again, off-again violence might never cease.
"I just want out of here," said Serena Rowe, 29, a single mother of four who has lived in the 800 block of Bethune Road for a year. "I can't take it. It's too dangerous. I don't let the girls go out and play; I'm constantly watching my back."
The first of the Bethune Road homicides occurred just moments into the year. Linwood Colvin, 28, of South Baltimore was killed after refusing to obey the orders of a gunman robbing New Year's Eve partygoers at a Cherry Hill apartment.
The circumstances surrounding Edward's killing are less clear. About 6:30 p.m. Monday, police arrived to find him shot in the upper body. Witnesses told authorities he had been shot in a parking lot beside a basketball goal, but someone carried the bleeding boy to a nearby home, said Officer Nicole Monroe, a city police spokeswoman. Shortly thereafter, the teenager was pronounced dead at Maryland Shock Trauma Center.
