The pop of gunfire surprised Troy Staton. He didn’t feel the bullets punch the back of his neck.
Street violence had never before intruded into his barbershop and art gallery, an urban refuge in Southwest Baltimore.
“It was upsetting because this is sacred ground,” Staton said a day later, with his neck bandaged, sitting outside the New Beginnings Unisex Barbershop.
The well-known barber, art curator and neighborhood organizer was among seven people shot — four of them, including a 13-year-old boy, fatally — on a violent Halloween in Baltimore.
“Am I upset? I’m upset with the system. A lot more can be done,” the 50-year-old barber said Thursday. “I can’t hold anger. I was hit three times in the back of the neck and walked away. God let me know my work isn’t done.”
The Halloween shootings brought October to a bloody close as the second most violent month of 2018. Thirty-four people were killed in the city in October, second only to September, when 35 were slain. The pace of October’s violence exceeded one killing a day.
Across Baltimore, families continue to grapple with the gun violence, families such as the parents of 13-year-old Montrell Mouzon.
The boy was found fatally shot Wednesday night in South Baltimore’s Lakeland neighborhood. On Thursday, the boy’s father said they had been handing out Halloween candy near their home in Seton Hill hours before his son was killed.
A neighbor said he heard about seven rapid shots around 9:30 p.m. as he was putting his twin daughters to bed. They had just returned from trick-or-treating in Linthicum.
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SOURCE: Tim Prudente and Colin Campbell
The Baltimore Sun
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