12-year-old Breaunna Cormley remembered at East Baltimore memorial: ‘She deserved her life’

Breaunna Cormley loved to play basketball and the saxophone. A cooking class was her favorite part of sixth grade, and the neighborhood remembers her as an attentive older sister.

“Let them know that she had love. She had love. She didn’t bother nobody. She was sweet. She was quiet. She was really kind of a homebody,” her grandmother Trina Baker said outside the East Baltimore rowhouse where she found the 12-year-old shot dead Friday night. “My heart hurts so bad for her.”

Around 75 people gathered in the McElderry Park neighborhood Monday evening to memorialize Cormley. Some attendees said they watched Cormley grow up. Strangers said the shock of the story compelled them to offer condolences.

“It takes a village to raise a child. It takes more than a village to bury a child,” family friend Talitha Coleman said.

Tears of sadness mixed with angry calls for change as speakers traded a megaphone. Safe Streets, the city’s violence-prevention initiative, helped organize the memorial.

“We are here because a 12-year-old was taken to us. We’re going to say ‘no more’ 12 times. We’re going to say it like it was your daughter. We’re going to yell like it was my daughter. We’re going to say it like we believe it doesn’t have to happen again,” Freedom Jones, a director at Safe Streets, said. “We’re going to say it 12 times. We’re going to say it from a spiritual place. We’re going to say it like we know we can do better.”

A heap of heart-shaped balloons and stuffed animals adorned the front steps of Cormley’s home. Friends and neighbors of the rising seventh grader at the National Academy Foundation stopped by to add to the pile and hug Baker.

“She was always taking care of both her little sisters. I would always see her outside watching them,” 11-year-old Yeimi Jimenez Lopez, who lives a few doors down, said. “I feel really sad for what happened to her. She deserved her life.”

Omar Passmore, 28, was arrested Sunday and charged with Cormley’s murder. Monday a Baltimore judge ordered him to be held without bail. Passmore and Cormley’s mother had a child together, according to court documents, and a neighbor described him as her on-again, off-again boyfriend.

Baltimore City Police said they received a call around 8 p.m. Friday about a 12-year-old girl being shot in the 500 block of North Kenwood Avenue. Police Commissioner Richard Worley said officers performed CPR before she was declared dead at the scene.

Maryland court records show two domestic violence cases were brought against Passmore in the past few years, one in 2021 that was closed and the other in 2023 that was settled. He was also listed as the defendant in a child custody case last month.

“When my daughter told me what happened. I didn’t believe it,” said Lora Bell, who lives down the street. “He just shot that child. A baby. It’s ridiculous. It’s unspeakable. Why would you do something like that? Just walk away.”

A vigil for Breaunna Cormley, the 12-year-old girl who was recently shot to death. (Karl Merton Ferron/Staff)