East Baltimore residents describe the chaos of the mass shooting: “Bullets have no names”

BALTIMORE – Police are still searching for suspects in Eight people were shot in East Baltimore Sunday night, leaving the Oliver community shaken.

One of the victims, identified as 36-year-old Anthony Martin, died.

Now the city is flooding the community of Oliver with resources.

A friend shared a photo of Martin, known to his friends as Chris, and tearfully described how he was there playing basketball when the violence broke out, stressing: “This was preventable.”

“It is not safe”

“It sounded like 15 gunshots: bang, bang, bang, bang, pow,” a longtime Oliver Township resident told WJZ investigator Mike Hellgren.

The resident, who did not want to give her name, said she knew immediately something was wrong when shots were fired nearby.

“I sat on the bed and went to the corner. I said, 'Oh no. Bullets have no names and no directions,'” she said. “It's not safe. What can we do? Complain? Nothing is being done.”

In the 1300 block of North Spring Street, where the violence broke out near a basketball court, anti-violence group Roca cleaned up the mess left by the barbecue.

In the chaos in which the eight people were shot, people left food behind and overturned chairs.

The survivors

On Monday afternoon, police said all seven survivors were in stable condition in hospital.

According to police, the non-fatal victims included:

• 21-year-old man
• 23 years old, male
• 39 years old, male
• 40-year-old man
• 41-year-old woman
• 45 year old man
• 46 years old, male

“I saw a girl lying next to the tennis court. She was just lying there. People were still running around. Motorcycles were driving away. It was a lively scene,” said a former neighborhood association president who did not want to give his name.

He described what he heard.

“It was like a volley of gunfire: fully automatic shots and then more shots. You could smell carbon in the air,” he said.