A 31-year-old woman and a young boy were shot in the head Thursday, becoming Baltimore\u2019s 37th and 38th homicide victims so far this month, the city\u2019s deadliest in 15 years.<\/p>\n
The most recent killings claimed the lives of Jennifer Jeffrey and her seven-year-old son, Kester Anthony Browne. They were identified by Jeffrey\u2019s sister, Danielle Wilder.<\/p>\n
Jeffrey and her son were found dead early Thursday, each from gunshot wounds to the head.<\/p>\n
As family members cried and held each other on the quiet, leafy block in Southwest Baltimore where they lived, Wilder said she felt as if \u201cmy heart has been ripped out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilder said a neighbor called their other sister early Thursday, concerned that she hadn\u2019t hear any noise coming from Jeffrey\u2019s house: no footsteps, Wilder said, no voices, and no gunshots. But when her brother let himself into the house to check on the mother and son, he discovered their bodies.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was in the living room,\u201d Wilder said. \u201cThe baby was upstairs, in the bed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wilder said police told her there were no signs of forced entry, and that whoever killed Jeffrey and Browne were let into the house sometime yesterday. Wilder said she thinks whoever killed Jeffrey, who also lived with her niece and grand-niece, wanted to catch her alone, and that the boy was collateral damage.<\/p>\n
Thursday\u2019s deaths continue a grisly and dramatic uptick in murders across Baltimore that has so far claimed the lives of 38 people. Meanwhile, arrests have plunged: Police are booking fewer than half the number of people they pulled off the streets last year.<\/p>\n
Arrests were already declining before Freddie Gray died on April 19 of injuries he suffered in police custody, but they dropped sharply thereafter, as his death unleashed protests, riots, the criminal indictment of six officers and a full-on civil rights investigation by the U.S. Justice Department that has officers working under close scrutiny.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m afraid to go outside,\u201d said Antoinette Perrine, whose brother was shot down three weeks ago on a basketball court near her home in the Harlem Park neighborhood of West Baltimore. Ever since, she has barricaded her door and added metal slabs inside her windows to deflect gunfire.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so bad, people are afraid to let their kids outside,\u201d Perrine said. \u201cPeople wake up with shots through their windows. Police used to sit on every corner, on the top of the block. These days? They\u2019re nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
West Baltimore residents worry they\u2019ve been abandoned by the officers they once accused of harassing them, leaving some neighborhoods like the Wild West without a lawman around.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore it was over-policing. Now there\u2019s no police,\u201d said Donnail \u201cDreads\u201d Lee, 34, who lives in the Gilmor Homes, the public housing complex where Gray, 25, was chased down. \u201cPeople feel as though they can do things and get away with it. I see people walking with guns almost every single day, because they know the police aren\u2019t pulling them up like they used to.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Baltimore Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 3 on Thursday posted a statement from President Gene Ryan on social media saying that the police are \u201cunder siege.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe criminals are taking advantage of the situation in Baltimore since the unrest,\u201d Ryan wrote. \u201c(Police) are more afraid of going to jail for doing their jobs properly than they are of getting shot on duty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Protesters said Gray\u2019s death is emblematic of a pattern of police violence and brutality against impoverished African-Americans in Baltimore. <\/p>\n
The 38 homicides so far in May is a major spike, after 22 in April, 15 in March, 13 in February and 23 in January.<\/p>\n
With one weekend still to go, May 2015 is already the deadliest month in 15 years, surpassing the November 1999 total of 36.<\/p>\n
Ten of May\u2019s homicides happened in the Western District, which has had as many homicides in the first five months of this year as it did all of last year.<\/p>\n
Non-fatal shootings are spiking as well \u2014 91 so far in May, 58 of them in the Western District.<\/p>\n
The mayor said her office is \u201cexamining\u201d the relationship between the homicide spike and the dwindling arrest rate.<\/p>\n
Source: AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A 31-year-old woman and a young boy were shot in the head Thursday, becoming Baltimore\u2019s 37th and 38th homicide victims so far this month, the city\u2019s deadliest in 15 years. The most recent killings claimed the lives of Jennifer Jeffrey and her seven-year-old son, Kester Anthony Browne. They were identified by Jeffrey\u2019s sister, Danielle Wilder. … Continue reading “Baltimore gets even bloodier”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[2113,3647,34,2372,40,11837,2110,157,1638],"class_list":["post-19194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","tag-african-american","tag-baltimore","tag-crime","tag-homicide","tag-murder","tag-policing","tag-racial-unrest","tag-racism","tag-us"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19195,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19194\/revisions\/19195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}