A 69-year-old Christmas tree seller was robbed and fatally shot early yesterday in a trailer parked in Northwest Baltimore.
Samuel Myers was shot about 4:30 a.m. during a robbery in the 4400 block of Reisterstown Road, where he had been selling Christmas trees for the past 10 days on a vacant lot. Investigators did not know exactly how much money was taken during the robbery, but Officer Sabrina V. Tapp-Harper, a city police spokeswoman, said "it was a large sum."
Mr. Myers has traveled from his Pennsylvania home for the past 30 years to sell Christmas trees in the Baltimore area.
Several hours before the shooting, thieves stole Christmas trees from behind Mr. Myers' trailer, police said.
Yesterday, shocked and somber workers cleared the trees from the lot and burned broken branches left after police officers impounded Mr. Myers' trailer.
Mr. Myers' body was taken to the state medical examiner's office for an autopsy. Authorities know of no suspects and no arrests have been made, Officer Harper said.
Anyone with information about the shooting or the tree theft is asked to call the Baltimore homicide unit at 396-2100.
Mr. Myers was the second Christmas tree salesman in the Baltimore area to be killed in two days.
Shortly before 9 a.m. Friday, employees of the A to Z Garden Center in Perry Hall found the body of Paul Robert Zinkhan, 53, near the building where he sold plants and fresh produce in the summer and Christmas trees during the holiday season.
Police said Mr. Zinkhan had suffered a fatal blow to the head. They were investigating several leads, including reports that the victim had taken in money from an auction the previous night.