BALTIMORE _ Coronavirus has ground Baltimore to a halt, curtailed the number of arrests and upended nearly every aspect of life in the city.
But the pace of killing has not slowed one bit.
Two shooting deaths Thursday night pushed the number of homicides this year to 103, one more than the total at this time a year ago. Baltimore ended 2019 with its highest ever homicide rate.
Around 10:44 p.m. Thursday, police responded to the 2500 block of E. Biddle Street and found 28-year-old Shawanna Spann suffering from a gunshot wound to her head. She was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital and later pronounced dead, police said.
About an hour later police arrived in the 2100 block of Aiken Street in East Baltimore, where an unidentified man had been shot and was unresponsive. He also was transported to a local hospital, where he died.
Also Friday morning, Baltimore police identified another homicide victim, David Spangler, 55, who was homeless and killed in the 1900 block of McHenry Street on May 5. And a 19-year-old shooting victim who was in unstable condition after being shot Wednesday in the 4400 block of Flowerton Road has since died.
The deaths are part of an especially violent week, with 14 killings in the last seven days.
Erricka Bridgeford, founder and organizer of Baltimore's Ceasefire weekend, said that even amid the COVID-19 pandemic she has been going to the homicide scenes to bless the area.
Bridgeford is now preparing for one of the city's 72-hour CeaseFire weekends, where volunteers go out to street corners or spaces of murder scenes and "bless the areas," often inspiring community members to embrace and encourage peace.
Bridgeford said there are at least 10 locations CeaseFire members will focus on over the course of the weekend.
"This last week was really bad. It was a really hard week for Baltimore," Bridgeford said. "While I am always heartbroken when I am in any murder space, i notice when there are stretches when their are no murders at all."
The killings in the city are is slightly ahead of last year's pace, with a total of 103 homicides recorded at this time compared to 102 last year
This year's pace follows last year's record breaking 348 homicide total, the second-highest homicide count after 1993, which registered 353 killings when the city's population was 125,000 higher.
