BALTIMORE — The teddy bears, hearts and candles outside Mays Court stand in tribute to the memory of 32-year-old Jacquelin Burley, but after she was gunned down here on Sunday afternoon, her family says no one remembered a thing.
"Everybody is saying they, of course, didn't see anything. No one was outside,” said Shakira Dutton, one of the victim’s nieces. “I have a hard time believing that being as the weather and the city we live in, and everyone knows when it gets warmer outside, Baltimore City doesn't know how to act."
What the family learned from police is that Burley suffered four gunshot wounds to the head, one to the neck and three more to the abdomen.
Her young son and daughter had to have heard the shots from a nearby playground.
"She has children. These children already lost their father. So now they lost their mother, too. This city... we've got to get better," said Dutton. "We just need to have more love in this world, because it should never be a case where as though a child has to wonder, 'When will I talk to my mommy, again? When can I see my mommy? When can I hold my mommy?'"
While Burley's death is the 20th in Baltimore in just 24 days this month, it represents far more than any statistic.
"Her birthday is on Christmas...and every year my family does something with Jackie, and we're just going to miss her cherry cheesecake," recalled Dutton.
But those memories are hard to come by right now with Burley's killer still at large, and an eerie silence now falling over the complex where she died in a hail of bullets and no one wants to talk about it.
"We grew up down in Douglass projects. Most of the kids in the family grew up down in Douglass projects. That's where we're from so her acceptance...her getting killed down there and she's from there,” said Dutton. “She's there every day. Everybody knows her. Everybody respected her, and our family is so big, we never thought this would happen."
