BALTIMORE — The calls came in over the Baltimore Police radio suddenly and all together.
”All units be advised,” a male voice broadcasted early last Sunday morning, ”there’s a shooting call.”
It was just after 12:30 a.m. and people had been shot — it was impossible to tell how many — all over the Brooklyn Homes public housing complex. Within three minutes of the first calls, another came in for the same area, the 800 block of Gretna Court.
“Getting reports of another shooting,” the dispatcher said.
The victim was a woman, and someone was doing CPR on her. All around the complex, masses of people, most of them young, ran screaming, either looking for cover or to get away.
Moments earlier, gunfire had ripped through a crowd of hundreds.
Now, victims’ locations crackled across the radio as they were found: One at Jack and 8th streets. Two on Clintwood Court. One on 10th Street and Stoll. Some on Gretna Court. Others on Herndon Court.
A night that began as a boisterous block party — a quasi-family reunion for current and former neighbors — became a sprawling crime scene for what likely was the largest mass shooting in Baltimore history. In total, 30 people were shot, most of them teenagers.
Two people, 18-year-old Aaliyah Gonzalez and 20-year-old Kylis Fagbemi, were killed.
Mass shootings later over the Fourth of July holiday left more than a dozen killed or wounded in Louisiana; five dead and two children injured in Philadelphia; nine wounded in Washington, D.C.; and seven injured, one teen fatally, in Salisbury on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
But the mass shooting in South Baltimore poses a unique challenge to a city struggling with changes in law enforcement and stubborn violence.
The police department remains under a federal consent decree to remedy constitutional violations but is plagued by turnover, lack of trust among residents, and frustrated efforts at community policing. Leadership is in flux: Baltimore’s acting police commissioner took the role about a month ago and the city agency that coordinates non-police public safety initiatives also has interim leadership. And despite a decline in fatal and nonfatal shootings compared with the corresponding period in 2022, the number of young people shot and killed this year is rising.
A lot is not known about the shooting. Authorities haven’t said much aside from that there were at least two shooters and at least two guns used, although evidence recovered from the scene suggests there were likely far more, perhaps more than a dozen, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation. There is a $28,000 reward for information leading to arrests.
On Friday, police arrested a 17-year-old in connection with the Brooklyn Homes shooting, but he faces weapons charges and is not charged with shooting anyone. The teenager’s attorney said he was among those shot as he was running away from the gunfire and that authorities alleged he is shown in a video clip from earlier in the evening pulling a firearm from a backpack and showing it off.
Advertisements for the annual “Brooklyn Day” gathering, which has happened every year for nearly three decades, escaped the attention of police, the mayor’s office and of the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, which called it “unsanctioned” in a statement provided to The Baltimore Sun — leaving attendees without police or other city employees monitoring as the sun set and the crowd swelled to as many as 1,000.
And while police knew of the large gathering as early as two-and-a-half hours before the shooting, officers didn’t attempt to intervene or disperse the crowd. Acting Police Commissioner Richard Worley said afterward the department had conversations “too late” about sending more officers to the area before the shooting, complicating the response for a patrol district that was short-staffed that evening.
Some Brooklyn residents, along with their City Council member, say a police presence would have been welcome. Officers were present in years past, they said, sometimes shutting down the party at the end of the night.
“We need security out here,” said Erika Walker, the Brooklyn Homes’ tenant council president.
The Baltimore Sun interviewed more than a dozen Brooklyn residents, listened to hours of police radio transmissions from Saturday evening into Sunday morning, and reviewed videos posted to social media from the event in order to parse what happened before and after the shooting.
Arriving officers were met with chaos. People grabbed them. Cars from the party blocked neighborhood entrances for ambulances and fire trucks. About four minutes after the first call, officers knew they were undermanned.
“Give me some units here,” one officer shouted. “I need medics here!”
Officers were told over the radio to stick together due to the large crowds. Videos from the aftermath, posted on social media, show scores of people running through the neighborhood.
Dispatchers asked for victims’ locations as ambulances arrived and officers tried to render aid.
“For the record, we don’t have control of the scene,” one officer yelled over the radio at 12:51 a.m. “We don’t have control of the scene.”
The party kicked off before sunset.
Word had spread through paper fliers stuffed in mailboxes and social media posts advertising performances by local rappers and homemade cocktails for sale: Brooklyn Day was on for 2023.
“5 pm – whenever,” an online announcement read.
Volunteers arrived earlier, setting up for pony rides, face painting and food.
Under the afternoon sun, neighbors chowed down and sipped snowballs.
The annual gathering was organized “ad hoc” this year, according to Councilwoman Phylicia Porter, who represents the area. The tenant council that typically coordinated the event hasn’t existed formally in recent years, she said, though a new council president, Walker, was elected a few months ago.
Walker said she learned of the event through a flier, like many others, and that there was no leadership before her election in May. During the party, she cooked her kids hot dogs and hamburgers from her front porch.
When a DJ stationed under a tan tent started playing music around 6:30 or 7 p.m., Walker said, the crowd had swelled to about 200. Video circulated on social media shows gathering teens facing off in dance battles, surrounded by peers, drinks in hand.
As the sun set, the gathering caught the attention of police.
“There’s a lot of people out here,” one officer said over the radio while responding to a crash less than a mile away.
Charlene Bowie, who lives at the intersection of Herndon and Gretna courts, said she saw police cars continuously pass by the block party.
“All through the night they kept passing by, and none of them stopped. Normally they would be lined up right here,” said Bowie, pointing to the base of Gretna Court, where police blocked off the road in years past.
Bunny Krabal, a 30-year resident of Brooklyn Homes, watched the party from her front yard overlooking Gretna Court. She said by 9 p.m. there were as many as 500 people there, some riding dirt bikes in the street.
Krabal decided against calling 911, even as the group grew, because she saw pony rides for kids.
“I didn’t want to call it in if it was a birthday party. I’m kind of sorry I didn’t call,” she said Wednesday, beginning to weep.
A couple of fights broke out back-to-back after 9 p.m., according to party attendees. They described hearing rumors there was a gun, and people running away. The DJ quelled at least one disruption.
“He said, ‘Y’all want to do that, you can go home. This is about love,’” Bowie recalled.
Video shows young women fighting before others in the crowd separate them.
Four workers from the Brooklyn-Curtis Bay site of Safe Streets, the city’s flagship anti-violence initiative, arrived after 9 p.m. and intervened in “a few” conflicts over two hours, none of which involved guns, according to Catholic Charities, which operates the site.
Dania Edwards, a 10-year resident of the housing complex, was one of several neighbors who said the longer the night went on, the more ominous things felt. She was worried that the book bags and fanny packs she saw several young people wearing could have guns.
“It didn’t look right to me,” Edwards said. “I’m a little spiritual: My spirit was telling me to leave.”
Around that same time, about 9:45 p.m., officials received a 911 call that there were “hundreds of males and females are armed with guns and knives.”
Someone over police radio responds, seemingly joking: “You might have to redirect that call to the National Guard.”
By about 10:30 p.m., police requested a flyover from the city’s police helicopter, Foxtrot. Over the radio, someone instructs others that the crowd is about 900 to 1,000 people and to “stay back.”
While they wait, a dispatcher reads another call over the radio: Reports of a firearm discharge, and people “shooting and fighting” on Herndon Court.
“Do not go into the crowd by yourself,” someone said on the radio.
Foxtrot reports back from the scene that there’s a crowd of roughly 700 people. A sergeant asks if anything looks suspicious because police had received a call for a firearm discharge. The helicopter operator responds that they saw fireworks.
“As far as the group inside the Brooklyn Homes, everything appears to be normal right now. Just walking around, hanging out,” Foxtrot’s operator said.
Bowie said firecrackers were set off at the party throughout the night. She and her 15-year-old granddaughter left the party around midnight, as did Krabal, who said she went inside her home about 10 minutes before midnight, as it started to rain.
“I always get these omens,” Krabal said.
Tierra Allen had a hard time getting back to her Brooklyn Homes residence when she returned around 12:25 a.m. She said swarms of young people filled the streets and cars packed all the parking spaces.
”This is a lot of people and no police,” Allen recalled thinking. “And way too many cars.”
About 10 minutes later, the shooting started.
A woman who was standing by the DJ booth said bullets started flying “out of nowhere.”
She described blindingly bright lights, the loud bursts of gunfire drowning out music and a panicked crowd created confusion about where the shooting was coming from.
Police later recovered shell casings from more than a dozen guns from the scene, sources with knowledge of the investigation said.
“People started running. Kids started screaming, crying,” said the woman, who requested anonymity because of safety concerns.
She ran into her family’s house and ducked to the ground. Outside, she said, the shooting went on for roughly five minutes. Others said it felt longer.
Bowie said a bullet struck her second-floor air conditioning unit in the bedroom where she and her granddaughter were watching TV. They crawled on the floor to her front door where they found a young woman who had been shot in the leg.
“I got her a towel and told her to wrap it around her leg and keep pressing down on it,” Bowie said. “She said ‘Ma’am what’s your address? I’m trying to get an ambulance.’”
Residents gave first aid on stoops and on sidewalks. They helped to load young people into cars bound for emergency rooms.
One woman said she personally drove two girls to the hospital after they were shot. Another neighbor, Terry Brown, let five teens take shelter in his house.
”They were running for their lives,” Brown said.
Paramedics would take nine people to area hospitals and another 20 arrived as walk-ins, the term for when someone doesn’t arrive in an ambulance.
Some went to Shock Trauma, others went to the pediatric emergency department at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
At least 19 were treated at the nearby MedStar Harbor Hospital, which does not have a trauma center but is closest. Three people were still hospitalized Friday, all of them in fair condition, according to police.
Dr. Thomas Scalea, Shock Trauma’s physician-in-chief, said Monday that Baltimore hospitals had not “been tested like this since 2015,” when the city experienced unrest in the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s death from injuries sustained in police custody.
In Brooklyn, the Safe Streets workers present earlier in the night, who’d left about an hour before the shooting, mobilized when they heard: Some returned to the scene, while others went to hospitals where victims — including their loved ones — were being treated.
The police set up command at 800 Gretna Court, with one officer, someone in charge, labeling it “ground zero” over the radio. Officers worked to hang yellow tape and take a full accounting of the damage done.
When police found Gonzalez, the 18-year-old who was killed, an officer radioed that she was “10-7,” police code for out service but also used when someone is dead.
“If there’s anybody near an ambo (ambulance) with a white sheet available, I’m going to need it … I’m going to cover this young lady up,” one officer said into the radio.
Another officer grabbed it for him.
Later, as the yellow crime-scene tape encompassed more and more of the low-rise housing complex, someone across the way filmed as police brought Gonzalez’s mother to the scene. Flanked by officers, she can be seen marching across the parking lot, past the police cruisers and toward the white sheet. They need her to identify her daughter.
She starts to scream, her voice piercing through the humid night air.
(Baltimore Sun reporters Lilly Price, Cassidy Jensen, Lia Russell, Dan Belson, Dillon Mullan and Emily Opilo contributed to this report.)
