Qualla: 2023 Baltimore Shooting

2023 Baltimore Shooting: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Fitzgerald, OpenStreetMap, CC BY-SA 2.0. Brooklyn Day was an annual celebration in the South Baltimore neighborhood of Brooklyn - a block party held in the open spaces of the Brooklyn Homes housing development. In previous years, organizers had given the city three days' notice. In 2023, they did not. There were no police officers stationed at the event. Around 12:30 a.m. on July 2, in the 800 block of Gretna Court, at least ten people pulled out firearms and started shooting. Twenty to thirty rounds were fired in the span of minutes. Aaliyah Gonzalez, eighteen years old, was shot in the head and died at the scene. Kylis Fagbemi, twenty, died at the hospital. Twenty-eight more people were wounded. Fifteen of them were under eighteen. It was the worst mass shooting in Baltimore's history.

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Image: Peter Fitzgerald, OpenStreetMap | CC BY-SA 2.0

2023 Baltimore Shooting: The Victims

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shoshanah from (not specified), CC BY 2.0. The victims ranged in age from 13 to 32. Of the 28 wounded, fifteen were minors. Nine people were transported to the hospital by ambulance, while twenty drove themselves or were driven by friends and family - a measure of how thin emergency response was for a mass casualty event ...

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Image: Shoshanah from (not specified) | CC BY 2.0

2023 Baltimore Shooting: Where Were the Police?

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Peter Fitzgerald, OpenStreetMap, CC BY-SA 2.0. Residents told reporters that there had been no visible police presence at the party for hours. The Baltimore Police Department began receiving 911 calls about armed people and noise complaints at 5:30 p.m., more than seven hours before the shooting. Officers from the Safe Street...

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Image: Peter Fitzgerald, OpenStreetMap | CC BY-SA 2.0

2023 Baltimore Shooting: An Investigation Tangled by Mistakes

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pubdog, Public domain. The investigation collected casings from more than a dozen guns at the scene, including six fired from a rifle-caliber pistol. Police estimated at least ten different shooters had been involved. The investigation was hampered by decisions made in the first hours. The Baltimore Po...

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Image: Pubdog | Public domain

2023 Baltimore Shooting: The Year That Followed

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Baltimore Heritage from Baltimore, MD, USA, CC0. The Brooklyn Homes neighborhood is on the southern edge of Baltimore, separated from the rest of the city by the Patapsco River. It is historically working-class, mostly Black, and has long been one of the poorest census tracts in Maryland. After the shooting, the city's Mayor's ...

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Image: Baltimore Heritage from Baltimore, MD, USA | CC0

2023 Baltimore Shooting: The ENOUGH Act

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Maryland GovPics, CC BY 2.0. Maryland Governor Wes Moore announced the ENOUGH Act in Brooklyn during the 2024 legislative session - a $15 million grant program directed at underserved communities. The bill's name was an acronym: Engaging Neighborhoods, Organizations, Unions, Governments, and Help. Moore desc...

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Image: Maryland GovPics | CC BY 2.0