Twelve people were shot to death and 15 more injured in the past week alone in Baltimore, one of America’s most dangerous cities that boasts some of the toughest gun control laws in the entire country.
According to local reports, a 22-year-old man was among those dead after being shot in the head and the chest on Sunday afternoon. The Baltimore Sun reports the city, which already has some of the nation’s highest homicide rates, is already on track to outpace last year’s record. As of last Friday there had been 83 homicides in Baltimore so far in 2021, eight more than during the same time frame last year. That total doesn’t include those killed over the weekend.
The problem has gotten so bad, in fact, that local residents in West Baltimore have set up a memory garden in Harlem Park in honor of those lives that have been lost, and where loved ones can come to grieve, place flowers, and lay memorial stones.
Related: All 7 Killed in Chicago Weekend Shootings Happened on Easter Sunday
The garden was set up by a group called Let’s Thrive Baltimore, whose CEO, Lisa Molock, said she hopes the park will be a safe place for people to deal with the trauma of living in such a violent city.
”Sometimes we don’t want to go to the cemetery or we might can’t get to the cemetery,” Molock said. “We have a space we can help care for together, that we can call our own, so we can begin the healing process. Because, Lord knows, with all the violent crime going on in Baltimore, we need to heal.”
Run by Democrats for decades, Baltimore ranked 4th on the list of the nation’s most dangerous cities in 2019. The city is also home to some of the most stringent gun control laws in America, a fact that hasn’t seemed to curb shootings within the city limits.