8 hurt, one dead in series of shootings on a violent Thursday
Incidents occur throughout Baltimore; police suspect no links between incidents
A man was killed and eight people were wounded in violence across Baltimore on Thursday, including a triple shooting in South Baltimore, which has borne the brunt of the city’s violence this year.
The shootings began about 2 p.m., when three people were wounded outside a convenience store in Baltimore’s Brooklyn neighborhood.
That was followed by a triple shooting in East Baltimore, a double shooting in the Park Circle neighborhood of Northwest Baltimore in which one person died, and a separate attack on a victim who turned up at MedStar Harbor Hospital suffering from a gunshot wound, police said.
In Brooklyn, Baltimore police said, a gunman wearing a red hoodie approached the 5th Street Food Market convenience store at 5th Street and West Pataspco Avenue and shot two males, ages 17 and 18, and a 34-year-old woman before fleeing. The victims are expected to survive, police said.
The woman is a store employee but was not working at the time. Police believe the gunman targeted one of the victims in an apparent act of revenge.
“It appears to be an incident of retaliatory violence,” Baltimore police spokesman T.J. Smith said. “We’re familiar with the victims, and that’s sad, because that’s what we continue to talk about. Today’s victims can be tomorrow’s suspect.”
Smith said detectives “have an idea” of the identity of the suspect.
The shooting and subsequent investigation occurred just as school was letting out. A school crossing guard stopped traffic just north of the crime scene to help children walk across Patapsco Avenue, while mothers escorted their children past crime tape blocking off the intersection where the shooting took place.
Kevin McCadden, a BGE subcontractor who lives nearby, said the woman who was shot works as a clerk at the store and is popular in the neighborhood. He said he was smoking a cigarette with her outside the store Thursday morning. He shook his head as he watched detectives stare at evidence markers on the sidewalk.
“Crazy,” he said.
About 45 minutes after the shooting, a gunshot victim arrived at Harbor Hospital in South Baltimore, but police said they don’t believe it was related to the Brooklyn shooting. Police believe he was shot in the 2200 block of Annapolis Road in Westport, the same block where another man was killed this week.
Police said the 25-year-old man was in his car when he was approached by his attacker and shot; the victim then drove himself to the hospital, where he was in serious but stable condition.
Later Thursday, detectives investigated another shooting in East Baltimore in the 1200 block of Luzerne Ave., where an abandoned wheelchair sat near several evidence markers.
Police spokesman Donny Moses said that about 5:15 p.m., a 28-year-old man using the wheelchair had been shot in the head but was expected to survive. Two other victims, a 25-year-old man who was shot in the ankle and a 21-year-old man who was shot in the abdomen, were also expected to survive.
Thursday’s two triple shootings weren’t related, Moses said.
About 6 p.m., two more people were shot in the 3700 block of Reisterstown Road in the Park Circle neighborhood.
One victim, a 34-year-old man, was shot in a lower extremity and expected to survive, police said. The other victim, a 38-year-old man, was shot multiple times and died at a hospital.
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