By Scott Calvert and Julie Bykowicz , scott.calvert@baltsun.com and julie.bykowicz@baltsun.com|August 02, 2009
The 55 souls gathered at Faith Tabernacle Apostolic Church kept worshiping Sunday evening when a flash of light danced across the stained-glass windows. Just a police car responding to a call, they figured, a common enough sight in this part of East Baltimore. Probably nothing too serious.
But a parishioner standing on the sidewalk knew something was very wrong. On the far side of Ashland Avenue, a crowd rushed from an alley screaming, "You shot? You shot?" The panic was understandable. A dozen people had just been hit by gunfire at a backyard cookout.
More patrol cars raced up, joined by ambulances. A police helicopter buzzed overhead. "Get off the corners," commanded a voice over a loudspeaker, "or you will be arrested." And so, for over an hour, church members in their white dresses and dark suits huddled in the sanctuary, praying.
It was one of the city's worst nights of violence in years, with a total of 18 people shot in five incidents before the sun rose Monday. Police think Sunday's barbecue attack was the latest bloody twist in a brutal feud between rival drug gangs.
For the tiny Madison-East End neighborhood, the episode is a grim reminder that despair relentlessly stalks hope, and that despite hard-won progress against parasitic drug dealers, many die young and many more live in fear.
As in too many corners of the city, it has tested anew the ability of some to see a future, even as others resolve to make this a good place to live.
"We haven't had anything like this," said the Rev. Lucille Calloway, Faith Tabernacle's long-serving pastor and a neighborhood optimist.
The shooting on Ashland has cast a spotlight on a neighborhood of contrasting qualities that starts eight blocks east of Johns Hopkins Hospital.
As its most dedicated advocates point out, this is hardly a forgotten community. City employees, pastors and retired state workers live here. Whole families, spread over three and four rowhouses, have deep roots. State Del. Talmadge Branch and his brother, Warren, a city councilman, call it home. Another delegate, Hattie N. Harrison, lives nearby.
There are tidy, flower-filled blocks and friendly neighbors, as well as engaged church congregations. There are youth programs, community centers, job training seminars.
There's a meticulously landscaped park, called "the Garden of Eden" by some, planted long ago on a string of vacant lots behind Ashland. It backs up to the yards where all those shots were fired last week.
