Baltimore Hockey Team Honors Fallen Friends, Firefighters, And Officer Keona Holley
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Damontae Lindsay arrived at the Dominic "Mimi" DiPietro Family Skating Center Sunday morning holding a hockey stick in one hand and rolling a portable subwoofer speaker in the other.
"We gotta do it for our fallen ones," Lindsay said. "They (were) my little brothers."
Three hours after he arrived at the rink, Lindsay scored the game-winning overtime goal in a 6-5 win over the Baltimore Sentinels.
Lindsay and his Baltimore Banners teammates played Sunday's "Bridging the Gap" hockey game in honor of fallen teammates Davon "Peanut" Barnes and Abraham "Abe" Luden.
"Once we come out victorious, it's going to mean a lot," Daryl Fletcher said prior to the game. "There's gonna be a lot of tears shed, I know. It's a big game. We're trying to come out with a win."
The Baltimore Banners, comprised mostly of inner-city young men and boys, played the Baltimore Sentinels, a first-responder team consisting mostly of police, firefighters, and Shock Trauma nurses.
"It's a tragedy that they lost two of their teammates in the past year," Baltimore Police Department officer Scott Lawrence said. "I've been on the police department 15 years and I've never dealt with a close loss like Officer (Keona) Holley."
Holley died last month after she was ambushed in her patrol car in December. She was honored prior to the game along with Peanut and Luden.
Sentinels player and Baltimore City Fire Department Firefighter Mike McKay played Sunday with his three fallen colleagues on his mind. Lt. Kelsey Sadler, Firefighter Kenny Lacayo, and Lt. Paul Butrim were killed when a vacant house partially collapsed as they were fighting a fire last month.
"The emotions between both teams is pretty strong," McKay said.
The game was also a fundraiser for The TenderBridge, the organization designed to provide opportunities for at-risk youth in Baltimore City.
"We're using this game as a memorial game," TenderBridge Board Member Jamal Perkins said. "Not having them here today is probably one of the hardest parts about it. This game, for every last one of them, more emotional than any game we've ever played."
A banner was unveiled pre-game with Abe's number 7 and Peanut's number 14 retired.
"The hardest part about today is coming to see him play and my nephew's not playing. That's the hardest part," Peanut's aunt Kaneisha Booker said. "It's like a pain that's never gonna go away."
Peanut and Luden were shot to death on East Monument Street on Sept. 13, 2021.
