[BALTIMORESUN] Aleasha Bowie was recuperating at her East Baltimore home from a surgical procedure Thursday morning when she heard the shots.She screamed for her brother, who was just about to leave for work, then rushed to the front of the house to peer out the window, she said. On the corner outside, she saw a young man ‐ someone she’d watched grow up in the neighborhood ‐ slumped on the street.
The 21-year-old man, whom police did not identify, was the 319th homicide victim in the city in 2017; raising the total beyond the 318 killings that occurred in Baltimore in all of 2016.
That means this year is now Baltimore’s second-deadliest on record on a per-capita basis, with a month left to go. The record was set in 2015, when there were 344 homicides.
Bowie, 40, immediately thought of the man’s mother, she said. Then she thought of her own children, who often play in the playground just feet from where the gunfire had erupted.
"I got four good kids. I’m trying to have them make it out of here," Bowie said shortly after noon, about an hour after police responded to the 1800 block of Aiken St. in East Baltimore’s Oliver neighborhood.