A 7-year-old boy was found shot in the head Friday in a home on Presbury Street and died a short time later at Johns Hopkins Pediatrics Hospital, Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said.
Harrison, accompanied by Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott on the scene Friday evening, said officers from the Western District were called to the Easterwood neighborhood around 5:06 p.m. and led to a home in the middle of the 2100 block.
There, he said, they found a “small, male child in the upstairs portion of the residence with a gunshot trauma to the head.”
Officers rendered medical attention, and the boy was taken to Hopkins hospital, where he died from his injuries.
Officers also found an 18-year-old man in the home and have taken him into custody. The man was taken to a hospital, where he is undergoing a psychiatric evaluation and will be interviewed extensively about what happened inside the home, Harrison said.
He did not say whether there is a relationship between the victim and the 18-year-old. Homicide detectives were processing the scene Friday, along with crime scene investigators. The department reported Saturday morning that there were “no updates to share at this time.”
“We don’t have many details,” Harrison said Friday. “We have this unfortunate and very tragic incident with yet another child losing a life in Baltimore City.”
A visibly frustrated Scott vowed that detectives will “get to the bottom of what happened” but said the city needs to continue to have conversations about the excess of guns flowing into the city and about the reasons so many young people have access to weapons.
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“No family should have to feel that pain,” Scott said. “We all should go to sleep with a heavy heart, heavy mind, heavy eyes.”
On a foggy Saturday on Presbury Street, thoughts from residents matched the gloomy mood.
Vivian Baines, a psychiatric specialist, said she saw police cruisers, a crowd and some of the roads blocked off when leaving for work about 6:15 p.m. Friday. She lives around the corner from the scene and didn’t know what was happening but said she heard wailing.
“I heard — now this is heart-wrenching — the wailing of the family members,” she said.
Baines, who has been working in the mental health field for more than 30 years, on Saturday morning sat on her porch, still in her scrubs, and discussed the shooting with a neighbor.
“Doesn’t it feel somber around here today?” she told the neighbor. She only found out about the shooting Saturday morning after her goddaughter told her what happened, Baines said.
Nicole Barrett, who lives across the street from the home where the child was shot, said this was a loving family and a working house.
“It’s a tragedy. I mean, the baby didn’t have a chance to live,” she said Saturday morning. ”I feel for the family.”
“In passing with these people, they seemed nice. They loved each other,” she said. “That mom does a good job of taking care of those children.”
Mae Lee, a Baltimore City Public Schools employee who works in the cafeteria, lives around the corner and on Saturday morning echoed Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott’s words from Friday about how kids are resorting to shooting one another.
“I just don’t know where all the guns are coming from. Why are the young people having so many guns? It’s out of hand,” Lee said. Kids back then used to fistfight, but now, they find guns, shooting one another to death over an argument, she said.
“It’s a terrible situation,” she said. “I don’t know what they’re going to do about it.”
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Harrison said Friday: “We talk about the prevalence of guns in our city. We talk about the willingness of criminals to use them, and we talk about gun protection and gun safety and responsibility. We talk about all these things... and yet it has happened again.”
Scott said: “What I challenge everyone to think about is the why. Why are people shooting and killing each other?”
Homicide detectives are investigating. Anyone with information is asked to call detectives at 410-396-2100.