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CV NEWS FEED // Pleading for an end to violence, the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Grief Ministry and partners held a prayer vigil and walk Dec. 30 to remember the people who were homicide victims in Baltimore in 2024.
The ministry partners with the Baltimore Police Department and Roberta’s House, a nonprofit family grief support center, to serve homicide victims’ families, an Archdiocese event notice said. The Archdiocese, St. Joseph’s Monastery Parish, Mount Saint Joseph High School, Catholic Charities, Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital, and My Brother’s Keeper are part of a Catholic peacebuilding coalition in the southwest part of the city called Health By Southwest, which was an event partner. The event included a half-mile candlelit walk from St. Joseph’s Monastery Church to My Brother’s Keeper on Frederick Avenue. During the walk, the victims’ names were read.
The number of homicide victims dropped from 261 in 2023 to at least 200, reporter Tommie Clark wrote for WBAL-TV 11 News, Baltimore’s NBC affiliate. Kyree Williams, 26, was fatally shot the night of the vigil and his death has prompted a homicide investigation, a Dec. 31 update of the article said. Police attribute the decrease to improved trust of the community, Mayor Brandon Scott’s Group Violence Reduction Strategy, and the department’s collaboration with federal and state law enforcement agencies.
“Does it really matter if it’s 199 or 201? Those are lives. We talk about them as numbers, but that’s somebody’s child, somebody’s father, uncle,” Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley, who walked with the victims’ families, noted in a WBAL-TV 11 News article by reporter Kim Dacey.
Nearly all of the people died in gun violence incidents, CBS News’ gun violence tracker indicated. There were about 2,900 non-fatal gun violence victims from Jan. 1 through Dec. 29, 2024.
“It’s a tragedy because most of those names that were read off were young Black men, probably under the age of 30, who had their lives cut out way too short,” Worley said in CBS News article. “We just have to stop the circle of violence and we’re going to keep fighting every day to do that.”
WBFF, a Maryland-based FOX affiliate, reported that this is the second year the Catholic church has sponsored the event and that victims’ loved ones also received care packages. Dorothy Cunningham, whose grandson Markell Hendricks was killed in 2018, when he was 16, said she doesn’t want any other mother or grandmother to experience the grief her family has experienced.