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BALTIMORE (AP) – Baltimore City leaders urged witnesses to share their knowledge with the police after an armed man fired indiscriminately at a crowd while enjoying Sunday afternoon meals, making a statement. man and wounding seven other people.
Police Commissioner Michael Harrison said the shots were fired after 5 pm in a neighborhood in the west end of the city, consisting of houses in rows of bricks. Harrison said that a man approached a crowd on foot and started shooting in what he called "a very tragic and very cowardly shootout". Speaking at the scene, Harrison said the shootings seemed "extremely targeted."
Chief and Deputy Mayor Jack Young both urged community residents to help investigators identify those responsible and their motivations.
"Someone knows something," Young said. "These things … they do not happen by chance. People know who is doing these shootings. "
The shooting comes about six weeks after Harrison's swearing in last month as police commissioner in Baltimore, when he promised to make the city safer and to lead the department through radical reforms required by a federal consent decree. This is an arduous task in one of the poorest cities in the country, where over 300 homicides have been committed in each of the last two years. Harrison is the 14th chief of police in the city since the mid-90s.
The Commissioner stated that two cooktops were being held Sunday on the other side of the street and that sockets had been found at two different locations, indicating that there may have been a second shooter or a person shooting at the first shooter who escaped. foot. It was not clear if the cooktops were related, Harrison said.
A fallen man collapsed behind a nearby Baptist church and was declared dead on the scene. Harrison first announced that six other people had been injured and taken to the hospital, but he did not reveal their names or health status. A police statement later revealed that a man had been killed but did not give his age. He said five of the survivors were men between the ages of 27 and 58, as well as a 30-year-old woman.
The Baltimore Sun quoted a police spokesman Sunday night in the evening as saying that an eighth victim, a man shot in the leg, was reportedly hospitalized.
Envelopes of bullets were found scattered on the floor near the grates, and a table still contained objects that appeared to have been left by a cooktop. After the shooting, police could have seen small orange markers on the floor, just steps from a hair salon. The investigators were looking for witnesses among the many people present.
Baltimore has been a victim of drug-related violence for decades and has long been considered one of the most violent cities in the country. The corrosive impact of the drug trade and a multitude of illicit arms continue to reveal a depressing recession of tweeting wars and retaliatory attacks, particularly in the deeply deprived areas of West Baltimore .
As municipal leaders continue their perpetual quest to rebuild the city for investors and potential visitors, Baltimore is experiencing a worrying increase in the number of violent crimes since 2015, when the homicide rate increased after the worst riots in the city since the death of a young black man in custody.
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