Thursday was a particularly violent day in Baltimore, with 12 people shot, four fatally, in a series of seven incidents. But the numbers are not unprecedented.
When it comes to tracking record-setting crime incidents, Baltimore police’s public data is recorded in such a way that makes it difficult to pinpoint the city’s most violent days.
But according to police data posted on Open Baltimore, which contains crime statistics dating back to 2012, Thursday tied with at least two other dates believed to be among the highest documented number of shootings in single day.
In May 2015, 12 people were shot, three fatally, in a single day. And in September 2016, 12 people were shot, one fatally, on a Saturday.
Five of the shootings Thursday happened in a single incident, making it the second quintuple shooting in a matter of months. In December, a shooting in front of a deli in the Greenspring neighborhood left five people injured.
According to police data, eight people were struck by gunfire at the same time, date and address in September 2016. That incident came during a particularly violent weekend, in which at least 19 people were hurt by gunfire.
And in 2009, before police published these statistics online, 18 people were struck in multiple shootings, spanning a Sunday night into Monday morning.
Baltimore’s highest ever number of killings in a single year was in 1993, with a record 353 homicides. However, the deadliest year on record when adjusting for population, was 2017, with 342 homicides, or 56 per every 100,000 residents.
The longest stretch of time Baltimore went without a shooting since 2012 was an eight-day period in 2018 from Feb. 12-19.
Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton contributed to this article.
To learn more about the methodology and review the computer code that generated the analysis, go to www.baltimoresun.com/2019-shootings-analysis.