This was originally reported on July 5, 2023
Brooklyn Day should have been a celebration of fun, community and joy. Instead, just after midnight on Sunday morning, gunfire took two lives and injured 28 others.
18 year-old Aaliyah Gonzalez was found dead on the scene. Gonzalez was a 2023 graduate of Glen Burnie High School. 20 year-old Kylis Fegbemi died in the hospital from his wounds on Sunday.
Four days after the shooting, police still have not released any information on suspects or arrests, but they do believe multiple shooters are responsible for the carnage.
Meanwhile, residents and city council members are looking for answers as to why the police were not present at a gathering that included hundreds of people —
especially when conflict was brewing before the shots were fired.
Stefanie Mavronis, the new interim director of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE), told reporters on Monday that local Safe Streets team members did diffuse 3-4 conflicts earlier in the evening. “This was not a Safe Streets sponsored event,” said Mavronis, who said the Safe Streets members were there as community members. Members of the media pressured Mavronis on why Safe Streets did not then alert the Baltimore Police Department, to which she replied, “I don’t know that Safe Streets would relay that.”
In an email to WYPR on Wednesday, Mavronis clarified the relationship between the police and Safe Streets by writing that the program’s success depends upon the “rapport amongst the community they serve.”
“Safe Streets staff are not law enforcement personnel, and, when performing their duties as violence interrupters, being seen as simple extensions of BPD could potentially call their credibility with communities into question.”
In 2020, The Baltimore Sun wrote the group does not “work with police or share information, as part of offering a safe space for people who may be engaged in crime. The goal is to reduce violence.” Despite that, recent evidence shows that their efforts to reduce homicide and non-fatal shootings are seeing success.
Interim BPD Commissioner Richard Worley has said from early on in the investigation that the event was “unpermitted” and that police did not have enough notice to enforce the event.
Worley told reporters that the Foxtrot police helicopter did observe hundreds of people gathering at Brooklyn Homes. “Obviously the conversation to deploy more resources was too late. By the time we got there, the event the incident [the shooting] already occurred,” he said.
Brooklyn Homes is run by the Housing Authority of Baltimore City. The authority wrote to WYPR in a Wednesday email and called this year’s Brooklyn Day an “unsanctioned event” and that they did not know of the party in advance.
“In prior years, residents organized the event and communicated it to HABC in advance of the scheduled date,” a representative of HABC wrote. “This allowed the authority to notify the Baltimore Police Department and other appropriate agencies of the event to monitor as needed. However, since COVID-19, the event has not been organized by the residents in the same manner and properly communicated to HABC, including their most recent event.”
The Baltimore City Council’s Public Safety and Operations Committee will meet on Thursday July 13th to discuss the city response to the Brooklyn Homes mass shooting.
Anyone with information on Sunday’s shooting can call Baltimore Homicide at 410-396-2100 or Metro Crime Stoppers at 1-866-7LOCKUP.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Director Mavronis' name. It has been fixed.
