Sitting in her car Tuesday night outside the Kennedy Krieger Institute as police investigated a shooting, Ana Matheus held up what may have spared her from serious injury: her Vera Bradley handbag.
She reached in and pulled out her pocketbook. Inside was a checkbook, a credit card and a $20 bill - all pierced by a bullet that narrowly missed striking her as she left work at Kennedy Krieger.
Matheus was not harmed, but a female co-worker was wounded when one of the stray bullets struck her in the hand about 6:30 p.m. Matheus said the woman was walking just a foot in front of her when the shots rang out. With the errant bullet piercing the bag that was slung over her shoulder, Mathus was inches away from being wounded herself.
"I've always felt pretty safe with the security guards on the corners, but I don't know, it definitely feels less safe now," said Matheus, a 27-year-old social worker in the pediatric hospital at Kennedy Krieger. "It's pretty surreal."
Police quickly made an arrest, charging 42-year-old Timothy Gaskins Sr. on Wednesday with attempted first-degree murder. But the shooting underscores the continuing challenges around the huge Hopkins complex on the city's east side, with occasional eruptions of violence despite significant efforts to revitalize the area. On Saturday, a man was reported shot in the leg at North Caroline and East Monument streets, just one block west.
Gary W. Goldstein, president and CEO of the Kennedy Krieger Institute, called Tuesday night's shooting a "major scare" but stressed that the employees were not targeted. He said there have been no attacks or attempted robberies "in the area between our buildings and the [parking] garage" in recent years.
"Whatever the altercation was, it was totally unrelated to" Kennedy Krieger, Goldstein said. "We know there's a lot of inner-city issues, but we haven't felt at all targeted, and I think the neighborhood and people living here greatly respect what we do."
Matheus said she felt a nudge on her patterned pink fabric bag but didn't think anything of it until she saw the woman in front of her screaming and bleeding. She and a co-worker ducked inside a nearby building. A security booth set up in a grassy median was apparently unmanned, but Matheus said security officers quickly rushed to their aid.
It was after things settled that Matheus realized a bullet had entered her bag, which police seized and entered into evidence control.
Police say they believe the shooting was sparked by an argument between two teenage girls fighting over a basketball game. The father of one of the girls tried to break up the fight, and Gaskins, the father of the other girl, opened fire, said Donny Moses, a police spokesman. Matheus and the other woman were struck in the intersection of East Madison Street and Broadway.
On Tuesday, police blocked off the entire intersection but appeared to be focused on an area near an apartment complex on the west side of Broadway, with one officer using an apparent metal detector as they looked for shell casings in grass.
Gaskins was arrested in 1992 and charged in the killing of an off-duty cab driver who was shot while waiting for a bus. The outcome of Gaskins' case was unclear; electronic court records show a co-defendant received life in prison, but Gaskins' file did not show the disposition. However, he does not appear to have been charged with any crimes between 1992 and 2008, and he has been arrested three times since.
The Baltimore City's Board of Estimates approved a $333,000 grant award on Wednesday morning to expand the Police Department's network of closed-circuit television cameras near the campus by partnering with East Baltimore Development Inc. The money will cover equipment and installation costs for 10 new crime cameras and a fiber-optic connection to the city's downtown camera monitoring center, and it will also pay for a crime analyst position.
The new cameras are a modest boost as police look to network their surveillance camera network with the vaster network of cameras operated by Johns Hopkins Hospital, said Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III.
Still, officials sought to stress that the area around the campus remains safe.
"We have education programs where we urge everyone to be vigilant and to be aware, but we're very proud of the safety record on the campus," said Joann Rodgers, a spokeswoman for the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, which is closest to where the shooting occurred. "We have a very professional security presence, that is part of Johns Hopkins medicine, and we have very good working relationships with the local police departments in the Eastern District and elsewhere."
