Deadly Violence In Baltimore Traumatizes City Residents
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Police Commissioner Michael Harrison on Monday attributed Baltimore's crime to a cultural issue that he needs local communities to help him break.
His explanation for the recent violent crime trend comes after 13 people were shot across the city over the weekend.
Seven of them were killed.
But those numbers mean more in the communities where the violence is happening.
People say each number turned into a trauma they're forced to endure simply because they live in Baltimore.
"I screamed: duck," a South Baltimore resident said.
That was how she reacted to the bullets that went flying outside of her window in broad daylight Saturday at around 4 p.m.
"My blinds were open, the bullet could have come through my window," she said.
After the gunshots stopped, the woman said she ran outside and found Marvin Pryor lying on the sidewalk. She said she could tell he was dead.
Pryor was 20 years old when he died—the youngest among seven men who were shot and killed over the weekend.
"This has nothing to do with anything we did or failed to do," Harrison said. "This is a result of a culture of violence.
He addressed the city's residents and said the police can't do it without them.
Hours after Pryor's death, a mass shooting in Northwest Baltimore killed three young men and injured a 73-year-old man.
Police are now reviewing video footage and looking at potential persons of interest but, Harrison added, there's more at play.
"It's conflict resolution and people are then retaliating using the same method of conflict resolution which is gun violence," he said.
But that violence creates trauma in the community in which it occurs.
The woman who found Pryor's body said she can't go back inside her apartment.
"I can't open my blinds," she said. "If I open my blinds, I see that young man."
Today, at 8:28 p.m., officers found a 35-year-old man with a gunshot wound at a local hospital.
They later learned that he had been shot in the 2900 block of Stranden Road, which is in the same neighborhood where Pryor died.
Maryland Metro Crime Stoppers is offering as much as $8,000 for any information regarding Pryor's case.
