When Gloria Curtis got the news that her son, Cameron, 28, had been shot to death while walking near his South Baltimore home in October 2004, she had an emotional breakdown. She?s never really recovered.
“I think about my son every hour of every day,” says Curtis, a teacher at Bentalou Elementary School. “I literally went into shock. I couldn?t work for four months.
“And when I did go back, the grief was so traumatic that I couldn?t drive myself. I stayed maybe three or four weeks, then went back out on medical leave. I went on medication for depression for over a year. My son?s death has changed my life. It has changed my life so drastically.”
Cameron, who had no criminal record and was a married father of three, was shot walking near his home at the corner of Hollins Ferry Road and Patapsco Avenue. Police have told Curtis little about the crime, but what she?s heard, she doesn?t like: no motive, no suspects.
“I?m not pleased with the way the investigation is going,” she says. “It?s just an open case.”
Curtis said she believes the police ? and the media ? aren?t giving her son?s death the attention it deserves because he is black.
“I hate to say it?s racial, but I feel that way,” she says. “Homicides where the victims are not black get more media attention. Everyone becomes desensitized, the police department included. My son did not have a criminal record. He was not involved in any wrongdoing. The least they could do is attempt to get leads.
“He was only doing what I taught him to do: Be a man, go to work, support his family. How can I teach the children I have [at Bentalou] that if you get a job and be productive, you?ll be OK? I can?t teach them that, because that?s not what happened for my son.”
