East Baltimore residents describe chaos of mass shooting

BALTIMORE -- Police are still looking for suspects after eight people were shot in East Baltimore Sunday night, leaving the Oliver community shaken.

One of the victims, identified as 36-year-old Anthony Martin, died.

Now, the city is flooding the Oliver community with resources.

A friend shared a picture of Martin, known to friends as Chris, and described through tears how he was just there to play basketball when the violence erupted. He stressed, "This was preventable."

"It's not safe"

"It sounded like 15 shots: Pop, pop, pop, pop, pow," one longtime Oliver community resident told WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren.

The resident, who didn't want to give her name, said she immediately knew something was wrong when gunfire erupted nearby.

"I was sitting on the bed and moved into the corner. I said, 'Oh, no. Bullets don't have no names and no directions,'" she said. "It's not safe. What can we do? Complain? Nothing gets done."

In the 1300 block of North Spring Street where the violence erupted near a basketball court, the anti-violence group Roca cleaned up the mess left behind from the cookout.

People left food and overturned chairs in the chaos where the eight people were shot.

The survivors

On Monday afternoon, police said the seven survivors were all stable at the hospital.

Police said the non-fatal victims included:

• 21-year-old male
• 23-year-old male
• 39-year-old male
• 40-year-old male
• 41-year-old female
• 45-year-old male
• 46-year-old male

"I saw a girl lying by the tennis court. She was just lying there. People were still running around. Motorcycles were leaving. it was an active scene," said a former neighborhood association president who declined to give his name.

He described what he heard.

"It was like a burst of shots: Fully automatic shots and then more shots. You could smell carbon in the air," he said.