As previously reported by REVOLT, over the weekend, 30 people were shot when a block party turned deadly in Baltimore, Maryland. While yesterday’s (July 2) incident is still under investigation, officials say the victims range from adults over 20 to individuals as young as 13 years old.
The Baltimore Police Department confirmed Aaliyah Gonzalez, 18, and Kylis Fagbemi, 20, as the two fatalities and another 28 were injured. A group believed to be in the hundreds celebrated their annual “Brooklyn Day” for the area’s Brooklyn Homes community when the tragedy occurred just after midnight. “This was a reckless, cowardly act that happened here and has permanently altered many lives and cost two people their lives. I want those responsible to hear me, hear me very clearly: We will not stop until we find you. And we will find you. Until then, I hope with every single breath that you take that you think about the lives that you took and you think about the lives that you impacted here tonight,” Mayor Brandon Scott said at a press conference yesterday.
Today (July 3), Scott appeared on “CNN This Morning” and discussed the Baltimore shooting. “We will not rest until we find those who cowardly decided to shoot up this block party and carry out acts of violence which we know will be illegal guns,” he said. The mayor wanted viewers to know that police are investigating “every single lead, every minute, every second of footage, everything that we have to find out who decided to disrupt this peaceful event in this way.”
A resident named Keith also spoke with CNN but declined to give his last name. He informed the outlet that he was at the event with his ice cream truck and attempted to help one of the victims during the aftermath. “I walked over to [Gonzalez], checked her pulse, straightened her out, tried to start doing CPR, but she was already dead,” he recalled. Others who were present took shelter in the patron’s company truck. Keith said his two daughters, 13 and 18 years old, are “fine but extremely stressed out.”