BALTIMORE — Shootings have gotten so bad people are afraid to hang out on their own porches. It’s what on East Baltimore man told WMAR-2 News after a 14-year-old boy was shot in the leg over the weekend.
RELATED: Violence continues with 14-year-old boy shot in Baltimore
He is the 42nd minor injured in a city shooting this year.
As police investigate, neighbors say they only feel one thing, fear.
“When I was coming up though in this neighborhood, it was good then. You could sit on your steps all night long and nothing never happen to you,” said Willie Harry.
He has seen the East Baltimore neighborhood he’s lived in his whole life turned upside down over the years watching life after light cut short by murder.
Mr. Harry isn’t alone with that feeling.
“I was in my living room and when I heard the bullets I ran because we have big picture windows what can stop a bullet from coming through there and they would’ve been shooting in that direction,” recalled one of his neighbors.
This neighbor was home at the time when the 14-year-old was shot this weekend telling WMAR she’s pretty familiar with the teen.
“The young man used to congregate on the steps of the house next door. They were on the other side of the street when the shooting happened the last shooting which probably saved the young mans life, gave him a chance to get down the alley if had been on my side of the streets he wouldn’t have had a chance,” she said.
Shootings like that are the reason they feel like prisoners in their own homes fearful if they’re at the wrong place at the wrong time they’ll be caught in crossfire.
See them guys that shoot them guns they don’t shoot half the people they be shooting at. They don’t ever hit them. They hit everybody else but the right person,” Harry shared.
“Now I’m just…I go to the front door just to get a little air and look up and down the block but I wouldn’t dare sit out there because I really fear for my life,” said the neighbor.
That brazen violence residents in East Baltimore are feeling everyday is chipping away at the sense of safety they once had before.
“People care about people back then. People don’t care about people now,” Harry said.
While WMAR was following up with the teen shooting, a man just blocks away was shot multiple times in the head around 1:15 Monday afternoon.
Police pronounced him dead at the hospital.
BPD asks anyone with information about both shootings to call 1-866-7LOCKUP.
