Last night the streets were filled with people, police, and politicians.
It was a crime walk to bring attention to Sandtown Winchester and the unthinkable shooting of five-year-old Amy Hayes.
Attention was brought but it also clashed with the frustration from those who live there, evident in the back and forth between a resident and Mayor Catherine Pugh.
“Let's just stop making excuses you all. We can do this. We can help you,” the mayor said. “But we have poor families out here and all that!” exclaimed the man in the crowd. “Well we're here, we're here to help okay? So, let's help,” Pugh refuted.
The mayor then abruptly turned and led the crime walk last night that lasted a few blocks around where Amy Hayes was shot.
Today though, those same streets were empty, quiet until Terry Williams showed up with his poster boards, pictures of recent youth killed in the streets of Baltimore.
From an East Baltimore organization named Challenge to Change but descending on the west, Williams wants more for Sandtown than a crime walk.
“So when that smoke is cleared. We still left with the problem. All that does is it’s almost like a band-aid over an open wound. You got to get down into that wound,” Williams said.
It requires focus he says, a steadfast commitment to mental health issues and poverty.
The stakes are as high as the murdered children in his 20 or so pictures Williams says, including Amy's older sister Taylor Hayes.
“Otherwise we are just beating around the bush, the same old status quo, making a bunch of noise because of the situation. But we aren’t trying to let it die. “We are so desensitized as a people in these cities now that if you let this go away for a day or two...it's going to be back to normal. ”
