A party in Baltimore, a hail of gunfire and a shattered neighborhood

Videos from a Saturday night block party show hundreds of teens and young adults dancing in Brooklyn’s Baltimore neighborhood and singing along to the lyrics of local rappers. While shouting and waving their hands in the air, many hold up phones to capture the revelry on a hot summer night.

But the videos, released shortly after midnight, tell a tale of terror and tragedy: teens running from gunfire, people falling to the ground, and a mother crying as she encountered police officers at the massive crime scene where her daughter was fatally shot.

A barrage of gunfire had swept through South Baltimore’s Brooklyn Day celebration, killing two young people and injuring 28 others. Half of the shots were under the age of 18, police said.

Even for a city ravaged by gun violence in recent years, the number of casualties was staggering, amounting to more people than would fit in an average high school classroom. In the past decade, only 10 other shootings in the United States have resulted in so many gunshot victims, according to the Gun Violence Archivesa research group, although many mass shootings have claimed more lives.

On Monday, many people in the Brooklyn borough remained shocked, with many city leaders urging people to provide information, even as police received sharp questions about why no officers were at the event. While it has no set date, the event has been held every summer for 27 years, the mayor said, and last year officers attended.

Acting Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley said the department learned of the party’s existence just “a few hours” before the shooting, which occurred just after 12:30 a.m. on Sunday. He said multiple guns had been used and police had not yet arrested anyone.

He and the mayor, Brandon M. Scott, deflected questions about the absence of officers and tried to draw attention to the perpetrators of the violence.

“We won’t stop until we find those responsible and hold them accountable — we don’t,” Scott said. “Having said that, we need the help of our residents and anyone who knows anything to come forward and speak up so that we can bring to justice those who recklessly perpetrate this type of violence.”

Mr Scott referred to a video circulating on social media of a teenage boy at the party showing off a gun and said the adults present have shied away from their responsibility to keep younger people in check.

“There were grown adults filming young people with guns saying nothing, doing nothing, not saying to the police, ‘Hey, I know this teenager is here at this event with a gun,'” Mr Scott said. “There was a time when even the toughest on the street, if they saw a young kid with something like that, they’d step in there and do something.”

Still, city leaders shed little light on why police didn’t know about the event sooner. In the days leading up to the party, several people had mentioned it on social media platforms. On Twitter alone, a handful of people discussed the event in public posts two days before it took place. One user wrote on Thursday that “all of Baltimore” was “talking about going to Brooklyn Day.”

Commissioner Worley said the department had found advertisements or social media mentions of the party in recent years and sent agents to check them out. But this year, he said, analysts and one of the department’s top intelligence officers had found none of the posts. He also noted that no one had applied for a permit for the event, though he acknowledged that the same was true of previous Brooklyn Day celebrations.

“We knew it was going to happen at some point, but we had no indication it would happen that day because we’d never seen any ads for it,” he said.

The shooting comes as Baltimore’s homicide rate has fallen slightly from recent years. according to The Baltimore Banner. But it has sparked fears that such a large, public shooting could spark a wave of retaliatory violence. The city saw an average of about 333 homicides per year between 2015 and 2022. according to The Baltimore Sun.

Krystal Gonzalez, whose 18-year-old daughter, Aaliyah Gonzalez, was one of the two killed, said Monday she felt more pain than she had ever felt in her life. She said with tears in her eyes that she recently organized a party for Aaliyah to celebrate her graduation from high school.

Aaliyah had worked at Starbucks, worked extra shifts and saved money for a car, her mother said. For much of high school, Aaliyah had longed to go to college out of state, but she changed her mind shortly before graduating and planned to enroll at Anne Arundel Community College near her home in Glen Burnie, a suburb of Baltimore.

“Suddenly, in senior year, as it’s about to end, she said, ‘Mom, I don’t want to leave; I want to stay here,” Mrs. Gonzalez himself. “She wanted to stay with us.”

Ms. Gonzalez said she didn’t think Aaliyah had ever been to the Brooklyn borough before, and that Aaliyah had spent the night with a friend in suburban Baltimore who decided to go to the party.

“She was such a good girl,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “She would analyze people — why do they feel that way? What can I do to help? – that’s who Aaliyah was. She was so, so smart and sensitive, and I swear this world didn’t deserve her. She was too good to be here.”

On Sunday morning, Ms. Gonzalez said, she was awakened by her husband’s screams of “No!” after someone used Aaliyah’s phone to call him and tell him she had been shot. Ms Gonzalez said she couldn’t believe the victim was her daughter and rushed to the crime scene, only to be stopped by officers who told her she didn’t want to see her daughter’s body.

“We need to find out who did this,” Ms. Gonzalez said. “It hurts so much.”

Police identified the other victim as 20-year-old Kylis Fagbemi. Commissioner Worley said officers are still watching videos and interviewing victims.

On Monday afternoon, remnants around the Brooklyn Homes, the public housing complex that was the centerpiece of the event, were a haunting reminder of what had happened the day before. Another truck with snow cones was parked in the parking lot of the complex. A few lawn chairs and a fuzzy purple stool stood outside rows of identical, squat redbrick apartments.

People living in the area said the party had started as expected, although perhaps with more young children than usual. There was a DJ in the parking lot, people dancing and vendors serving food.

Anthony Wicks, who lives nearby, said he watched over his 6-year-old daughter as she played in their front yard at the party on Saturday night.

Hearing gunshots, Mr. Wicks grabbed his daughter and ran. As he ran, he was hit in the side of his torso by a bullet that had ricocheted off something else.

“I almost was; it was almost my daughter,” he said Monday. “The kids aren’t even allowed to go outside. It is too much.”

Donna Owens contributed reporting from Baltimore. Alain Delaqueriere contributed research.