Safe Streets member shot, dies
Police seek information on outreach worker’s shooting
Members of Safe Streets Cherry Hill mourned another killing of one of their own after an outreach worker was fatally shot Thursday.
Baltimore Police detectives said Friday they were stymied in their investigation, including figuring out where the shooting occurred.
Kenyell “Benny” Wilson, 44, an outreach worker for Safe Streets, drove himself to Harbor Hospital around 4:40 p.m. Thursday for treatment of a gunshot wound. Police said Friday that he crashed in the parking lot before making it to the emergency room entrance.
But investigators do not know where the shooting took place. Typically, police can cross-reference 911 calls or other information and determine a crime scene, police said, but as of Friday afternoon they had been unable to do so. They even released a picture of Wilson’s vehicle in hopes it might jog someone’s memory of seeing him.
“We’re hoping someone may have seen it in the course of his drive,” said
police spokesman Donny Moses. The vehicle was described as a silver Volvo XC90, with a tag of 3DS8016.
The shooting stunned city leaders and the Safe Streets community, coming just one week after Safe Streets Cherry Hill celebrated a year without a fatal shooting within its boundaries. Earlier this year, one of the leaders of Safe Streets, Dante Barksdale, was gunned down in East Baltimore.
Police announced the arrest of a suspect in May.
The Cherry Hill site’s office, which is run by FHCB Health Service, was shut down Friday to allow workers to mourn.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott on Thursday evening called the shooting a “cowardly act” and said he was angry and deeply saddened by the loss.
“Safe Streets has a special place in my heart, and I consider the Violence Interrupters who bravely serve this program as a part of my family,” Scott said in a news release. “Tonight, our brother Kenyell Wilson became a victim of the gun violence he worked every day to prevent.”
The Democratic mayor said he was working with Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison to make an arrest in this shooting “a top priority.” He also said that his administration would not waver in continuing to support community-based violence intervention programs.
Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat whose district includes Cherry Hill, said he was told by a Safe Streets worker that Wilson left the office around 4 p.m. and said he was going to get food and would return. He never made it back.
“They’re devastated, beyond devastated,” Ferguson said of Safe Streets. “They were up all night trying to figure out what happened, mitigate retaliation or other issues.”
Safe Streets employs people, typically with a criminal past, to use their credibility in the community to mediate disputes and spread a message of peace.
Ferguson said the killing just a week after the site celebrated a year without a homicide in its boundaries was jarring.
“It’s the epitome of the challenge [we face], to go from such a high to such a low. It’s very deflating,” Ferguson said.
Attempts to reach Wilson’s family Friday were unsuccessful. City officials who oversee Safe Streets also were not available for comment.
“As someone who turned their life around to do the work of curing Cherry Hill of violence, ‘Benny’ epitomized redemption,” Shantay Jackson, director of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Community Engagement, said in a statement Thursday night. “While he has transitioned physically, his light will never leave us and it guides us as we continue the critical work of interrupting violence in our neighborhoods.”