Here's one gloomy stat for Baltimore's Memorial Day weekend: One person was killed every eight hours.
A tour of every slaying spot took three hours and 10 minutes (including time spent talking to people) and covered 35.6 miles. It started at what was then the last slaying, in West Baltimore's Harlem Park, and ended at the first slaying in East Baltimore's McElderry Park.
The killings were scattered from Northeast to Southwest. From in front of single-family houses with picket fences along Loch Raven Boulevard, where warning signs remind residents to scoop up dog poop, to the sagging rowhouses along Pulaski Street, where signs warn, "Stop shooting, start living."
The longest trek between killings: 8.6 miles from North Rose Street to Pennington Avenue. The shortest: three-tenths of a mile, from Pulaski to Ramsay streets. The shortest time between killings: 2 minutes —Rose Street and Pennington Avenue.
Police attribute the killings to reasons as disparate as the locations: two domestic disputes, including one in which a man intervened in a fight between a couple and was stabbed; a gang feud that led to two deaths; and an argument that escalated to hair-pulling and ended with gunfire from semi-automatic weapons that left two men dead at a street-corner holiday cookout.
The violence forced the city's top cop to bemoan "petty neighborhood disputes that got out of control" and to remind the city that crime other than homicide — nonfatal shootings, burglaries, assaults, robberies — were down this weekend. Though that's a difficult message when there are nine people dead in your city (and a tenth just a few hours later).
The public-defender-turned-mayor spoke of riding with the cops to a stabbing and seeing first-hand how nobody ever knows anything about crime that occurred in front of them. Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake implored her citizens to "want more for ourselves in our community than this type of lawlessness."
Just how lawless was it? So lawless that a crime that ordinarily would draw anger seemed almost sadly comical amid what the city was going through: Someone shot at a city cop on Monday, missed and instead hit and wounded his friend.
The tour starts at 8 a.m. in the 500 block of N. Fulton Ave., just above Franklin and below Edmonson, where a man was shot and killed about 12:43 a.m. on Tuesday. The block lacks any hint of violence. No leftover shreds of crime scene tape. No blood stained sidewalk. No crying mothers. Just a vacant lot littered with empty whiskey bottles and shattered glass. Only shrugs from people, when asked what happened.
It's a 7.9 -mile drive to the next killing spot, the Parkside Gardens apartments in far East Baltimore, close to where I-95 merges with the Harbor Tunnel Thruway. There's nothing here either — just drab cookie-cutter buildings and a few men outside who shout, "No English" as a reporter approaches. This was a domestic killing, police say, involving a man arguing with a woman who called for a friend who rushed to help and got stabbed.
It's 5.8 miles to the 5900 block of Loch Raven Boulevard, a few blocks north of Good Samaritan Hospital. Here, a resident called police late Monday morning after seeing a man slumped over in a sport utility vehicle. The man had been shot.
The houses are single-family, and some have picket fences. The lawns are mowed, and though the street is wide and busy, it has a grassy median for dog walkers. But in front of one house, someone has etched what could be gang graffiti in wet concrete: "Dip Set G Street."
From there, it's a long drive across the city to Southwest Baltimore's Carrollton Ridge. Two men were shot Sunday night on South Pulaski Street, on the border with Boyd-Booth. A man pulled a woman's hair. She raced to relatives, who returned with guns and opened fire at the cookout.
At the site, mourners have placed a tribute of eight sets of plastic flowers, three empty bottles of vodka and an empty chocolate chip cookie bag. Balloons are tied to a nearby pole. A woman stuck her head out her front door and simply shook her head. She wasn't home when the shooting started, she says, nodding only that she knew the victims, before closing the door and retreating inside.
Just four blocks south is Ramsay Street and another domestic killing. A police car idles at the curb.
It's 4.7 miles back up to the 400 block of North Rose St., where 18-year-old Davon Dorsey was shot in the head about 1:17 Saturday morning. There is a streetcorner memorial. Stuffed teddy bears, one with a small sign wrapped around its chest reading "My young savage," are strapped to a light pole, dangling over burnt red and white candles.
A poster on the pole allows people to write their thoughts. "Death B4 dishonor," reads one. "Tried to save you but the angels took you," says another. An anguished aunt pleas for money to pay for a funeral. Rosa Terry's nephew had a girlfriend and a daughter on the way. "No amount is too small," the sign reads.
