BALTIMORE — The crime tape in front of a bus stop at West Cold Spring Station tells a story of a milestone no one in the city of Baltimore wants to hit.
“It makes me feel like you just need to go to work and go straight in the house,” Arthur Gilliam said. “You’ll be one less statistic out here.”
The ground is still wet where Gilliam is standing as we talk, the blood from the homicide just a few hours ago washed away.
“It’s hard to live here and have to worry about how I can’t even take my kids to the park or let them go anywhere by themselves,” said Gilliam. “I don’t let my kids go nowhere without me, nowhere. I don’t trust nobody, can’t trust nobody now.”
As the pace of the violence picks up, Joseph Moulden is saddened to hear another life was taken.
“It has to stop at some point in time,” Moulden said. “It’s broad daylight you have kids out here, people coming home from work. It has to stop. When will it end?”
An hour earlier another man was killed on North Fulton Avenue in West Baltimore, on a block with a church, a school, and the familiar site of deflated balloons marking a makeshift memorial.
“You lose two lives,” said Moulden. “You got one that’s going to prison for something that he thinks he’s standing for, and you got one that lost his life. His family has to go through that; it hurts, and it’s in my community.”
Police will investigate the who and the how--but the why will never answer the deadly narrative seen all too often.
“I was once one of these kids that ran around like that,” Moulden said. “It took me 20 years in prison to understand how life works. I don’t want that for none of these kids.”
The state has promised millions of dollars for an approved crime plan from Police Commissioner Michael Harrison.
The deadline for that plan is August 1.
