Victim was not a target
Woman, 65, was an innocent bystander, De Sousa says
The 65-year-old woman who was fatally shot Saturday night on her West Baltimore porch was the innocent bystander in what detectives believe was a targeted attack on a 22-year-old man also killed in the encounter, Police Commissioner Darryl De Sousa said Monday.
“It’s 100 percent unacceptable,” De Sousa said Monday of Pinky Louise Ruffin’s killing, after he walked the cherry blossomlined 3900 block of West Mulberry St. in Allendale where she lived and was shot.
Ruffin’s family could not be reached for comment, and no one answered the door of her home.
De Sousa said police believe Marques Patterson, 22, was targeted in the attack, but declined to discuss the basis for that belief. Patterson’s family also could not be reached.
De Sousa said police still need to “peel some layers back” to reveal exactly what occurred before the shooting erupted on the street, but are making progress in the investigation. He declined to say if they had identified a suspect.
Ruffin and Patterson were both pronounced dead at an area hospital shortly after they were discovered suffering from gunshot wounds late Saturday night on the block.
They were two of five people killed in the city this weekend; more than a half-dozen others were injured in shootings.
Sahantana Williams, 20, was killed Friday in the 3000 block of Rayner Ave., in the nearby Franklintown Road neighborhood, police said Monday.
Raheem Bey, 25, was killed Friday in the 500 block of North East Ave., in the Ellwood Park neighborhood, police said.
And Jerod Watson, 24, was killed Sunday in the 3800 block of West Franklin Ave., also in Allendale, police said.
There has been a high volume of violence in recent months in the neighborhoods that line the U.S. 40 corridor as it cuts through West Baltimore between the Inner Harbor and Leakin Park, from Franklin Square to Penrose and Shipley Hill to Rognel Heights.
The weekend violence continued Monday when two people were shot and killed in East Baltimore.
The shooting occurred around 4 p.m. in the 1700 block of E. Federal St. The victims, a man and a woman, were taken to an area hospital, where they died from their wounds, police said.
A block away from the shooting, Will Richards walked slowly up the block holding a microphone in one hand and his smartphone in the other. Richards, a grass-roots journalist who grew up nearby, said violence has grown worse in recent years.
“We always had people selling drugs and shootings, but nothing like the shootings what’s going on right now,” he said. “It used to be a code of honor on the street where you don’t shoot women, children or old people.”
De Sousa said police have lots of intelligence about the weekend violence. The 3900 block of West Mulberry Street in Allendale, where Pinky Louise Ruffin, 65, and Marques Patterson, 22, were shot to death on Saturday night.
“We know who the main people are. We know what organizations are involved in this. And we had several meetings over the course of the weekend — Friday, Saturday and Sunday — coming up with how we could change our strategies,” he said. “We have a set of initiatives planned to target them directly.”
De Sousa said police have been tracking a string of retaliatory incidents since the fatal shooting of mother and daughter Chanette Neal, 43, and Justice Allen, 21, in their home in the unit block of Gorman Ave. in Penrose on April 4.
Police are also tracking what they believe has been retaliatory fallout from two separate gambling disputes, De Sousa said.
“It’s all related to those three separate incidents. It’s all those three,” he said.
He would not say whether the groups were known gangs or drug crews, but said “two separate sides are going at it with each other.” He also would not say what the new initiatives would involve — only that they would be “constitutional.”
De Sousa said he does not believe that the weekend violence threatens progress the department has made in reducing violence in the city from the historic levels seen last year, but that it must be — and will be — halted as soon as possible.
“The community is totally frustrated, and so are the men and women of the police department,” he said.
He said police are ready to hold those responsible accountable, and are working around the clock to do so.
“We are out and about. Everybody is engaged, in a constitutional manner, a proactive manner,” he said.
Still, detectives need more help in their investigations, he said.
“We need people to step up right now,” De Sousa said. “The great folks that live in the community, we just need them to step up, give us a lead, give us a tip, something.”
Police ask anyone with information to call homicide detectives at 410-396-2100 or text 443-902-4824, or to call Metro Crime Stoppers at 1-866-7-LOCK-UP. construction and in professional, scientific and technical services, the analysis found. In construction, black workers make up less than 12 percent of the workforce in the city and just 13.2 percent in the region.
In professional, scientific and technical services, the region’s leading sector — and one with opportunities for high wages — African-Americans make up fewer than one in six workers in the city and region.
Wage gaps persist within industries, even those that tend of offer higher wages, such as professional, scientific and technical services or utilities, finance and insurance. Black employees in finance and insurance earned nearly half of what white workers earned — median earnings of $61,656 compared to $122,964.
Even in sectors with significant black employment, the income gap is apparent. In transportation and warehousing, white workers earned a median of $64,740, while black workers earned $37,116. In retail, white workers earned $37,560 compared with $25,680 for blacks.
Elizabeth Kennedy, an associate professor of law and social responsibility at Loyola University Maryland and a panelist at the presentation, said strategies to offer better access to higher wage, lower turnover jobs need to be paired with increased efforts to combat systemic racism in the workplace.
“Looking at ways to reduce racialized barriers … in Baltimore will operate as a change lever for African-Americans and for all of Baltimore city,” Kennedy said. “This report is a really sobering recognition that currently the occupations that AfricanAmericans are concentrated in are not those change levers… These workers aren’t ending up in those occupations by accident. Let’s talk about systemic structural racism and … what is it that we have to do to change that.”