Citywide Violence Plateaus as Winter Begins

By Racquel Bazos - December 11, 2023
Data | Featured | Homicides | Non-Fatal Shooting | Shooting | Victims |

Baltimore Witness data sourced from Baltimore Police Department (BPD) press releases showed almost no change from October’s numbers in non-fatal shootings and homicides. November brought one less incident in each category, but the violence was more geographically concentrated than it had been in October.

In November, four of the nine police districts reported zero homicides. The Northern, Western, Northwestern, Southwestern and Southeastern districts are the five districts where homicides occurred this month.

The Western and Northwestern districts shared an equal concentration of murders this month at four. In the Western District, a Nov. 14 shooting left two victims, including 19-year-old Shakari Lee, dead. The other male victim has yet to be publicly identified. 

The Southeastern and Southwestern districts had two murders each, and the Northern district had just one. The Southwest District’s deaths both stemmed from the same incident on the 300 block of Chapelgate Lane, where 21-year-old Charles Johnson and a 20-year-old Eniyah Smith were shot multiple times. They were later pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.

There were no police-involved homicides in November, although there was one police-involved shooting in the Southwest District. 

The Southwest District led the city in non-fatal shootings with 11 for the month. Another of the incidents there involved four men shot at one time on the 2000 block of West Pratt Street. BPD officers applied life-saving tourniquets to three of the four victims. 

The Southern District placed second for the second month in a row, with eight incidents. 

The Western, Southeastern and Northern districts represented the middle of the pack, with six, five and four incidents respectively. Two of the Southeast District’s shootings that included those five were a 43-year-old man on the 2900 block of McElderry Street and a 17-year-old on the 200 block of North Conkling Street. Both were taken to local hospitals to receive treatment.

The Central District had three non-fatal shootings, equalling its rate from October, while the Northeastern and Northwestern districts both had two. These numbers represent a month-over-month drop of two shootings in the Northwest District and three for the Northeast District. 

The Eastern district increased its non-fatal shootings by one since last month, with three. Included in that figure was the case of a 61-year-old man shot on the 1900 block of Belair Road in late November. 

There were two non-fatal shootings with undetermined locations.