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CBS News BaltimoreWatch Now
By Mike Hellgren
Filed Under:Baltimore, Crime, Fatal Shooting, Maryland News, mass shooting

BALTIMORE (WJZ) — The president of the Gardenville community association said she feels lucky to be alive after a mass shooting on Plainfield Avenue just steps from her home Tuesday evening.

“I pulled into my driveway, and I heard the pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I thought it was fireworks earlier and then said, ‘No! That’s gunfire,’” Patricia told WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren.

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She asked that we not use her last name for safety reasons.

“I was very, very upset and hurt,” Patricia said. “I’m praying for the people and the families that are affected by this. I had just come down the street right before the shooting. I’m just thanking God that he spared my life because bullets have no name. Anyone could have gotten shot.”

An unknown shooter approached the victims who were sitting outside a home in the 5500-block of Plainfield. Bullets struck four young men. An 18-year-old and a 22-year-old lost their lives. Another 18-year-old and a 23-year-old victim survived.

“We have a very calm and quiet community. We leave our doors open like back in the day with no problems,” Patricia said. “I’m hopeful that things will get better, but it’s not going to happen overnight. And it’s not going to take one person, two people. It’s going to take a community. It’s going to take the city to come together.

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Her neighbor Thomas Deyo said he never remembers an incident this violent in his more than 40 years in the neighborhood. “The worst we’ve ever seen or heard is somebody breaking into a car. My message to city leaders is if they’d lock the criminals up and throw away the key, we’d have a lot less crime.”

Less than an hour after the Plainfield mass shooting, gunfire erupted again in Northeast Baltimore on Chesterfield Avenue in Bel Air-Edison. Three men were shot. One of them, 19-year-old Brian Jones, died.

No arrests have been made in any of the cases.

The violence unfolded as the city council grilled the commissioner over his response to the bloodshed gripping the city.

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Another shooting on Tuesday left a man dead in Carrollton Ridge. It was the third homicide in that Southwest Baltimore community in less than one week.