Stray Bullet

Sitting upright and alert on her hospital bed's white sheets, Keonya Christian-Cannon was still in her rainbow-heart pajamas, but she was ready to go home. Keonya, 14, had been recuperating at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center for more than a month, after a stray bullet struck her as she walked across the street from a park near her West Baltimore home. The bullet tore into her abdomen, just below her rib cage. She is one of at least 280 people - 50 of them juveniles - who have been shot, but not killed, in the city this year and a painful example of the many who survive, virtually unnoticed by a city struggling with a surging homicide toll.

Shenea Counts, suffering through another humid night in Baltimore, grabbed a quarter, stepped onto South Bentalou Street and walked to Rosie's corner bar, where a sign in the window advertises: "Cup of ice: 25."The 13-year-old, slurping on the fast-melting cubes, walked back toward her small rowhouse across the street. She was shot just steps from her front door -- struck in the chest by a stray bullet fired during what police said was a drug dispute at the corner.Shenea ran inside and collapsed.

Jerry Walley devoted his life to God and church. Even when the 19-year-old stopped for snacks at a convenience store near his West Baltimore home, he often had a Bible or a religious pamphlet in hand.Monday night, with seven relatives in the family van headed to their church near their Dickeyville home, a stray bullet fired from a group of warring young men shattered the driver's side window and struck Walley in the left side of the head.The victim -- described as a "kind and gentle person" by his next-door neighbor -- struggled on life-support for more than eight hours at Sinai Hospital before he was pronounced dead at 5: 45 a.m. yesterday.

Baltimore opened its new year yesterday with 12 people shot in the first seven hours after midnight -- at least one hit by a stray bullet apparently fired into the air to mark the arrival of 1998.Since Christmas, 32 people have been shot in Baltimore, and 12 of them have died. In all of last year, 309 people were killed, down 7 percent from the 1996 total of 331.Yesterday's shootings left police watchful after a year in which violent crime in the city, particularly shootings, declined significantly.

A picture above his bed depicts the Last Supper, and left open on his bed is a worn copy of the Bible from which he would read a few pages every night. He last read I Corinthians, Chapter 8.James Chester Streeter's life revolved around his family and serving the Lord. But Monday night, as the deacon walked through a drug-infested area near his East Baltimore home to deliver coats to friends as a church duty, he was struck fatally by a stray bullet.Mr. Streeter, 28, who lived in the 2100 block of Cliftwood Ave., was pronounced dead a short time later.

A 71-year-old man was charged yesterday with shooting a 7-year-old girl who apparently was hit by a stray bullet while she played in front of her home in Cherry Hill, Baltimore police said.Jimia Knight was listed in serious condition today at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Police said she was shot in the right side about 7 p.m.Nathaniel Bailey Evans, 71, of the 500 block of Roundview Road, was charged with assault with intent to murder and a handgun violation. He was being held on $50,000 bail and was expected to have a hearing today.

A 16-year-old was arrested and charged with murder yesterday in the death of a Morgan State University student at a bus stop and the wounding of a 10-year-old boy who was hit by a stray bullet, police said.Kenneth Andrew Bond was arrested shortly after 8 a.m., police said, at the apartment of a relative in the 5200 block of Denview Way in Cedonia, in Northeast Baltimore. The Bond youth lives in the 4600 block of Marble Hall Road in Northeast Baltimore, a few blocks from where the Nov. 27 shooting occurred.

The last time Robert Hardy Jr. saw his mother alive, Nannie Hardy was heading to her bedroom to rub her arthritic body with salve and say the Lord's Prayer.An hour later, at about 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Mr. Hardy found his 71-year-old mother on the floor with a bullet wound in her neck. Police believe she was hit by a stray bullet that came through the window of her second-floor bedroom.Mrs. Hardy was one of four people killed by gunfire in the city during the weekend. The death of a fifth man found across from the Mount Pleasant Golf Course is being listed as questionable.

Two men found dead in a Northeast Baltimore apartment Tuesday afternoon were suffocated, city police said yesterday.But investigators released few other details of the double homicide in the 4300 block of Forestview Ave., as detectives continued to probe those slayings and the shooting deaths of three other people on Tuesday.The men found on the third floor apartment on Forestview Avenue were identified yesterday as Leaf Hansen, 23, and his roommate, Timothy Tyson, 22.Officer Sabrina Tapp-Harper, a police spokeswoman, said the cause of death was asphyxiation.

Close to death, with a bullet wound in his brain, the 4-year-old lay in a hospital bed. His body was motionless; his spirit was not."I dreamed I was in a circle with a lot of people who were holding my hand, and we were going around the world," the child recalls today.His family feared the worst. But Quantae Johnson survived. He awoke and asked to watch cartoons. Doctors called his recovery incredible. Well-wishers, many of them strangers, marveled at his courage and sent cards, cash and toys.

Two dozen people showed up for Wednesday evening's Citizens on Patrol walk through Southwest Baltimore's Carrollton Ridge neighborhood - six weeks after a stray bullet hit a 5-year-old girl there. It seemed like a good turnout, until one scanned the faces. One person was from Violetville, another from Union Square. A community leader from South Baltimore came, as did two representatives from the mayor's office, two Guardian Angels, six police officers, the commander of the Southwestern police district, the police commissioner, two from his media office, two television cameramen and two television reporters.

A 5-year-old girl was critically wounded Thursday afternoon, struck by a stray bullet fired by a young man who left a Southwest Baltimore street fight and returned with a gun, police said. The girl was on life support last night at University of Maryland Medical Center, where Mayor Sheila Dixon said her family was distraught and looking for answers. At the crime scene, swarms of people crowded around an intersection within view of two small, pink sandals and a pool of blood on Pulaski Street.

The drug dealers swarmed around Tiffany Square. "Kill Bill, middle of the block," came the clarion call from the man in a blue winter cap and tan coat, slinging heroin named after the blood-thirsty movie of a revenge-bent killing spree. "Down there, the car at the light," one of the spotters yelled toward a customer. This scene isn't from 1991, when 6-year-old Tiffany Smith, playing with a doll, was struck in the head by a stray bullet fired during a shootout between rival drug dealers, the start of a decade of drug violence from which the city has yet to recover.

A 6-year-old boy was wounded yesterday by a stray bullet during a shootout in Northeast Baltimore, police said. Police received a call about 5 p.m. about a shooting in the 3200 block of Lyndale Ave. at the corner of St. Cloud Avenue in Bel Air-Edison, said Agent Donny Moses, a police spokesman. The boy, who was one of several children playing in the area at the time of the shooting, was struck once, Moses said. The bullet passed through the upper right side of the boy's chest and did not strike any vital organs, Moses said.

City police were trying to determine whether a 2-month-old baby boy was shot in the head yesterday evening by a stray bullet fired from outside his O'Donnell Heights home. Officer Troy Harris, a police spokesman, said that shortly after 6 p.m., someone standing in the 6100 block of Plantview Way fired several shots, one of which penetrated the exterior wall of a rowhouse and entered the house. In the confusion that followed the gunshots, Harris said, residents of the house grabbed the baby and rushed outside for safety.

Sitting upright and alert on her hospital bed's white sheets, Keonya Christian-Cannon was still in her rainbow-heart pajamas, but she was ready to go home. Keonya, 14, had been recuperating at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center for more than a month, after a stray bullet struck her as she walked across the street from a park near her West Baltimore home. The bullet tore into her abdomen, just below her rib cage. She is one of at least 280 people - 50 of them juveniles - who have been shot, but not killed, in the city this year and a painful example of the many who survive, virtually unnoticed by a city struggling with a surging homicide toll.

Angel Burrell and Keonya Christian-Cannon didn't know each other until one girl helped save the other's life. As Christian-Cannon walked by a West Baltimore park, near Harlem and Braddish avenues, a fight - possibly over gang turf - broke out among several young people Friday afternoon. Someone pulled a gun and sprayed the street with bullets. Dozens of yards away, police said, a stray bullet hit the 13-year-old in her abdomen. A half-block away, Burrell had just gotten off a bus when she heard gunshots and saw a girl running toward her, "bleeding from her shirt.

A 4-year-old boy was shot by what appeared to be a stray bullet that entered a Columbia apartment yesterday evening after what police believe was a brief altercation at a shopping center. The boy, whom police have declined to identify, was in critical condition last night at Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. Police said the shot was fired outside a corner apartment at the Sierra Woods apartment complex about 6 p.m. The bullet went through the lower part of the front window of a corner apartment where the boy was struck.

Tamyka Felder's mind reeled when she saw the blood covering her little boy, shot on an East Baltimore street on Wednesday night. Should she call 911 or drive him to the hospital? Five-year-old Dagod Darby had begun crying as soon as a bullet ripped through his hand. In a panic, his mother tore off his jacket, searching for the wound. Felder, a nursing student, recalled that she and other students once debated the textbook advice of waiting for an ambulance if a hospital were nearby. However, when she saw blood all over her only child, she reverted to her training and yelled for a friend to call 911. "It was a lot of blood, but I couldn't find where he was shot," Felder said.

In Baltimore City Three men shot, one fatally, outside Seton Hill apartment Three men were shot last night, one of them fatally, outside an apartment building near the edge of the city's Seton Hill neighborhood, police said. The shooting occurred about 8:30 p.m., police said, when a car stopped and an occupant opened fire at the men in the 500 block of Orchard St. Two of the unnamed victims were taken by ambulances to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where one died and the other was admitted with a wound to the buttock.