With 38 homicides, the city is in its deadliest month in 15 years.
Arrests down after Freddie Gray death, uproar.
BALTIMORE — A 31-yearold woman and a young boy were shot in the head Thursday, becoming Baltimore’s 37th and 38th homicide victims so far this month, the city’s deadliest in 15 years.
The most recent killings claimed the lives of Jennifer Jeffrey and her 7-yearold son, Kester Anthony Browne. They were identified by Jeffrey ’s sister, Danielle Wilder.
Jeffrey and her son were found dead early Thursday, each from gunshot wounds to the head.
As family members cried and held each other on the quiet, leafy block in southwest Baltimore where they lived, Wilder said she felt as if “my heart has been ripped out.”
Wilder said a neighbor called their other sister early Thursday, concerned that she hadn’t heard any noise coming from Jeffrey ’s house. When her brother let himself into the house to check on the mother and son, he discovered their bodies.
“She was in the living room,” Wilder said. “The baby was upstairs, in the bed.”
Wilder said police told her there were no signs of forced entry, and that whoever killed Jeffrey and Browne was let into the house sometime yesterday. Wilder said she thinks whoever killed Jef- frey, who also lived with her niece and grandniece, wanted to catch her alone, and that the boy was caught up in the violence.
Thursday’s deaths continue a dramatic uptick in murders across Baltimore that has so far claimed the lives of 38 people. Meanwhile, arrests have plunged: Police are booking fewer than half the number of people they pulled offff the streets last year.
Arrests were already declining before Freddie Gray died on April 19 of injuries he suffffered in police custody. But they dropped sharply thereafter, as his death unleashed protests, riots, the criminal indictment of six offifficers and a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Justice Department that has offifficers working under close scrutiny.
“I’m afraid to go outside,” said Antoinette Perrine, whose brother was shot down three weeks ago on a basketball court near her home in the Harlem Park neighborhood of West Baltimore.
“It’s so bad, people are afraid to let their kids outside,” Perrine said.
“Before it was over-policing. Now there’s no police,” said Donnail “Dreads” Lee, 34, who lives in Gilmor Homes, the public housing complex where Gray, 25, was chased down. “People feel as though they can do things and get away with it. I see people walking with guns almost every single day, because they know the police aren’t pulling them up like they used to.”
Police Commissioner Anthony Batts said his offifficers “are not holding back,” despite encountering dangerous hostility in the Western District.
“Our offifficers tell me that when offifficers pull up, they have 30 to 50 people surrounding them at any time,” Batts said.