A Baltimore County community group has called for enhanced security measures at a Woodlawn hotel, after three people were shot there early Friday morning.
Officers arrived at the Red Roof Inn on Whitehead Court at about 2 a.m. Friday; two men and a woman went to hospitals with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds. Police said the shooting was “an isolated incident” that posed no threat to the community, according to a news release.
But the Randallstown branch of the NAACP said they have asked management of the Red Roof Inn to take extra steps to increase safety at the Whitehead Court hotel. They said the requests are a response to a pattern of incidents that drain emergency resources.
Suggestions from the NAACP include employing off-duty police officers as security guards, adding extra cameras and banning anyone who isn’t a registered guest from the property. Other proposed changes focus more on hygiene, like ensuring rooms are cleaned daily and that smoking isn’t allowed.
“We want to really address these crime magnets. You can come to Baltimore County, but we really want you to be good community partners. You can’t just make money and unleash this stuff on the community,” Randallstown NAACP President Ryan Coleman said Monday. “These businesses come in and they don’t really immerse themselves in the community.”
An employee who answered the phone at the Red Roof Inn on Monday and declined to give his name said that the Days Inn previously at the same location had security guards, but they couldn’t prevent shootings from happening.
The NAACP branch has worked out agreements with hotel owners in the past to try to address repeated incidents of violence or reports of sex trafficking.
Coleman said Monday that the owner of the Ramada by Wyndham hotel in Pikesville, where a 16-year-old recently died in a shooting, had agreed to close the hotel by the end of the year and sell the property to Royal Farms. Last week, Coleman referred to the Pikesville hotel as a “crime magnet,” citing previous incidents linked to the location.
Spokespeople for Royal Farms and the hotel chain did not return requests for comment. A Ramada employee at the hotel on Reisterstown Road reached by phone Monday afternoon said a manager was not immediately available.
Two other men were shot over the weekend in Baltimore County, police said.
On Friday evening, an officer from the Essex precinct found a man with a gunshot wound in the 2200 block of Hawthorne Road at about 7:15 p.m. Police said in a Monday news release that the identity of the man, who died at a hospital, was still unknown.
A 44-year-old man was in serious condition after a shooting in Catonsville just after 1 a.m. on Saturday, police said. Officers responded to the 6400 block of Frederick Road for reports of a shooting. A police spokesperson had no update on the man’s condition Monday.
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