UPDATE: Baltimore police are reporting another killing in Southwest -- a 28-year-old man stabbed in the neck this morning on the front steps of a house in the 1800 block of Eagle St. It's officially in the Southern police district, but the neighborhood is Carrollton Ridge, a hard-hit area of the southwestern part of the city. Police tell me they're investigating robbery, but it's unclear if this latest killing is related to the others.
Baltimore police are looking to quell an outbreak of shootings in the Southwest part of the city and say some might be related. The Sun's Justin Fenton takes a look at the violence and the department's efforts to avoid a late-year outbreak that could threaten the historic lows seen in homicides in 2009: