Christine Richardson, 15, was stabbed to death in her bedroom.
Ashley Bellosi, 23, was fatally beaten at her Mount Vernon home.
Two officers, Karen Brzowsky, 34, and Loretta Francis, 29, were shot while breaking up a dice-game robbery near Patterson Park.
They were lucky. They lived.
Bellosi and Richardson were among the 29 people killed last month in Baltimore. So far this year, 187 people have met the same gruesome fate ? 25 more than the 162 people murdered this time last year.
Thereare too many funerals and too many memorials to count.
“Your laughter is etched in my heart forever,” Bellosi?s sister, Dana Bellosi, wrote in an Internet tribute. “I am sad that I won?t see you grow old like me. You will be young and beautiful forever.”
Baltimore NAACP president Marvin ?Doc? Cheatham challenged residents to post the rising murder rate each day in their windows as a wake-up call.
Cheatham wants Baltimore residents to get more involved with police community relations; ministers to speak out against the violence; and parents to become more involved with their kids’ schools.
“We have to deal with our own homes,” he said. “This issue deals with us as a family.”
Acting Baltimore Police Commissioner Frederick Bealefeld blames the city?s crime problems on two nagging factors: Gangs and guns.
Indeed, of July?s homicides, only six were not carried out with the bang of a gun.
“Your men and women of the police department risk their lives every day to take guns from bad guys off the street,” said Bealefeld, appointed by Mayor Sheila Dixon last month to replace former Baltimore Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm, whom the mayor asked to resign amid the soaring murder rate. “We don?t shirk from that responsibility.”
Bealefeld?s officers have seized 2,000 illegal firearms this year in comparison with 1,800 this time last year.
One week in July, police seized 113 guns compared with 59 for the same period in 2006.
“It?s not just talk,” Bealefeld said at a recent news conference. “We?re not just talking about guns. We are dedicated to doing something about guns.”
Robberies have decreased by 12 percent in the city, and aggravated assaults and overall violent crimes have decreased by 10 percent compared with last year, police statistics show.
But many residents who have becomevictims of crime say they don?t feel safe.
A woman robbed at gunpoint in Federal Hill on July 27 said she doesn?t buy a popular belief that citizens are safe in Baltimore provided they don?t get involved with drugs.
“That is totally false,” said Megan M., who asked her last name not be printed for fear her attacker might return. “You are only safe because you are lucky.”
Megan was out with three girlfriends for a birthday celebration that Friday night at 11:30 when a man ran toward the group with a silver semi-automatic weapon and demanded their purses.
“Only one of us was actually robbed, but all of us were traumatized by both events that night,” she said.
Baltimore police have increased robbery arrests this year by five percent ? 471 compared with 449, statistics show. But nearly 70 percent of the city?s murders this year remain unsolved. Of the 187 murders this year, the department has closed 59 ? 32 percent ? of the cases, leaving seven out of 10 killers still walking the streets.
Two of those 59 arrests have reached their conclusion in Baltimore City Circuit Court.
One ? the March 27 stabbing death of 18-year-old Artesha Moses ? resulted in a second-degree murder guilty plea and a sentence of 20 years.
The other ? the weird, confusing killing of 22-year-old Alvin Parson ? was never brought to a grand jury. Prosecutors said they dropped murder charges against suspects Anasion Waldron and Panagiodis Bekiaris after several key witness statements conflicted with one another.
Baltimore City Councilman James Kraft, who has clashed recently with State?s Attorney Patricia Jessamy, said the city?s problems are complex and can?t be fixed overnight.
“The serious crime is so deep-rooted,” he said. “You can?t point to any one thing and say ?This is the problem.? We have so many broken people in this city. People who were raised by drug dealers. People who were raised by violent criminals. They don?t know any other way to live.”
