Picture this: Monday afternoon in Northwest Baltimore, 4:26 PM. The workday isn't even over. School kids are walking home, people are thinking about dinner, and the 5200 block of Muth Avenue is just a neighborhood street doing what neighborhood streets do on a Monday.
Then the shooting starts.
When Northwest District officers got there, they found three men down. Not one. Three.
A 24-year-old had been shot multiple times, all over his body. A 39-year-old and a 21-year-old were hit too, in the torso and the extremities. All three were rushed to a local hospital, and medics did everything medics know how to do.
The 24-year-old died anyway.
Say his age again, because it matters: twenty-four. Old enough to have a job, a family, people who expected him home Monday night. Young enough that a whole life was still in front of him. As of this morning, Baltimore police have not released his name, which means somewhere in that city is a family that got the worst phone call a family can get on a Monday afternoon — and the rest of Baltimore doesn't even know who to grieve for yet.
The other two men — 39 and 21 — are listed in stable condition. They lived. "Stable" is a hospital word, not a life word. It means the doctors think they'll make it. It doesn't say a word about the surgeries, the recovery, the bills, or what it does to a man to survive the afternoon his friend didn't.
Baltimore homicide detectives have taken over the investigation. As of now, police have announced no arrests and no suspects. Whoever did this walked away from a street where three men were shot in broad daylight, at an hour when the whole neighborhood could see — and neighborhoods at 4:26 in the afternoon always see something.
If you saw something, say something. Baltimore Homicide Detectives: 410-396-2100. If you'd rather stay anonymous, Metro Crime Stoppers takes tips at 1-866-7LOCKUP, and you can text a tip through their website without ever giving your name.
Here's the part that should stop you cold. This was Monday afternoon. Sunday night — the night before — two people were shot dead and three more wounded at a gas station on Edmondson Avenue, and three more people were shot inside Pepper's Liquors on Reisterstown Road. We covered both of those, right here. Three shootings. Three neighborhoods. Eleven people hit by gunfire. In less than twenty-four hours.
Baltimore doesn't have a gun problem on the weekends. Baltimore has a gun problem on Mondays at 4:26 in the afternoon, with the sun still up and kids on the sidewalk.
We've reached out to the Baltimore Police Department for comment on the Muth Avenue investigation and will update this story when they respond.
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