BALTIMORE — An altercation outside a bar escalated into deadly gunfire in Baltimore’s Carrollton Ridge neighborhood early Saturday, ending a five-day stretch of relative peace when the city recorded no homicides.
Three other separate shootings Friday night, two shootings Saturday and one Sunday also left people injured — including another fatal shooting and a shooting just around the corner from the Carrollton Ridge homicide, which unfolded around 12:40 a.m. Saturday near the intersection of South Bentalou and Ashton streets.
Baltimore Police said Southwest District officers responded to a ShotSpotter alert in the area. Once there, they found an unidentified male victim lying unresponsive in a nearby alley adjacent to the 2300 block of Ashton Street, which runs along the eastern edge of Catherine Street Park across from the Westside Shopping Center. The victim was transported to Shock Trauma but pronounced dead shortly after arriving, officials said.
Around 11:50 p.m. Saturday, a man was shot in a vehicle that had crashed into a pole in the North Harford Road neighborhood on the 3500 block of East Northern Parkway. Paramedics took the 46-year-old man to the Johns Hopkins Hospital at Bayview, where he was pronounced dead shortly after.
A 27-year-old man was shot in the thigh early Sunday morning. The man sought treatment at a hospital in East Baltimore around 3 a.m., police said, but detectives have not located where the man was shot. His injuries are not life-threatening.
At around 7:45 p.m. Saturday, officers responded to gunfire on Christian Street, less than a block away from the fatal shooting on Ashton Street. A man in his early 20s had been shot in the arm, police said. He was hospitalized and expected to survive.
“I don’t know how people don’t care about life,” said Seydou Mbo, who owns two businesses at the intersection of Ashton and South Bentalou streets. “We only get to live one time.”
A native of West Africa, Mbo moved to America for college and studied accounting. He later opened a convenience store and a deli across the street from each other in Southwest Baltimore. Standing in the doorway of the deli Saturday morning, he said the overnight homicide made him think seriously about whether it’s time to sell his businesses and “get the hell out of this place.”
But before the shooting, he said, things seemed to be trending in a positive direction in his corner of Carrollton Ridge. City officials recently invested in much-needed improvements to Catherine Street Park after it sat overgrown and deteriorating for years, he said. And some vacant rowhouses along Bentalou Street are getting renovated, including one that suffered fire damage.
Neighbors said the gunfire early Saturday followed an altercation outside Rosie’s Sports Bar, which stays open until 2 a.m.
At the scene Saturday morning, the bar was closed, its front door locked; some dried blood stained the pavement and leftover yellow crime tape stretched across the alley.
Baltimore police responded to two other nonfatal shootings Friday evening.
A man was shot in the arm around 7:40 p.m. in the Better Waverly neighborhood. Northeast District officers found him in the 1600 block of East 30th Street with a gunshot wound to his left forearm. He was hospitalized for treatment.
About a half hour later, Northwest District officers responded to reports of gunfire on Reisterstown Road in the Liberty Square neighborhood. A man with a gunshot wound to his shoulder was hospitalized and expected to survive.
On Saturday afternoon, a man was shot around 2:15 p.m. in the 3700 block of Towanda Avenue in Northwest Baltimore. Police said he was transported to the hospital with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds.
Police were also investigating the stabbing of a 50-year-old man in the Fells Point area Saturday afternoon. That incident happened shortly after 3:15 p.m. in the 1700 block of Bank Street. The man was stabbed in the stomach and was hospitalized in serious condition Saturday evening, police said.
The violence Friday and Saturday followed several days of relative peace in Baltimore. The city went five days without a homicide — from early Monday to early Saturday, according to records maintained by The Sun.
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(Baltimore Sun reporter Alison Knezevich contributed to this report.)
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