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Baltimore recognizes one-year mark of Brooklyn Day mass shooting that left ‘scars and trauma’

The smiling face of Aaliyah Gonzalez, surrounded by balloons, beamed at her friends and family in a Glen Burnie Park as they commemorated the one-year anniversary of her death in Baltimore’s largest mass shooting.

Employees from the Starbucks where the 18-year-old had worked passed out cold drinks and a few young men stripped off their shirts to compete in a basketball tournament staged for the event. The joyful mood was purposeful: replace the day’s pain with memories of Gonzalez as a budding artist and beloved daughter.

“Aaliyah brings people together,” her mother, Krystal Gonzalez, told Montgomery Del. Greg Wims on Tuesday afternoon, looking around at attendees who included other mothers who became advocates after losing children to gun violence.

Last July, gunfire broke out after midnight at the Brooklyn Homes community’s annual Brooklyn Day block party, turning an event “about love” into a bloody crime scene. Thirty people were shot, two fatally. Both the Housing Authority of Baltimore City and the Baltimore Police Department had little presence at the event, saying they weren’t aware it was planned.

The shocking incident created “scars and trauma,” Mayor Brandon Scott said in a Tuesday statement, that “continue to ripple through our entire city.”

“The tragedy shook our community to its core, forever impacted families, and irreversibly altered lives,” Scott said.

In the year since, Baltimore prepared after-action reports examining the role city agencies played. The police department moved to discipline some officers, including possibly firing two employees. Other city agencies have tweaked policies, while the housing authority beefed up its security presence. Meanwhile, Brooklyn Homes residents have been looked to heal.

On Tuesday, the city partnered with a host of community organizations for a Healing and Wellness Event in Brooklyn beginning at 2 p.m., specifically geared toward Brooklyn Homes residents. Gonzalez’s family hosted a memorial event in her honor at Sawmill Creek Park.

Gonzalez said she didn’t want to memorialize her 18-year-old daughter with a candlelight vigil like so many others she has attended.

“We decided we weren’t going to cry and moan,” her great-uncle John Young said. “We wanted to celebrate her life in a good way. She was a happy soul.”

Meanwhile, near the Brooklyn Homes community center, part of 10th Street was blocked off Tuesday afternoon with a stretch of canopies and tents offering resources. At one end, moon bounces and games drew kids. Attendees toted reusable bags or small wheeled carts filled with handouts and donated items.

Some residents appreciated the healing and wellness event, saying it was a way to encourage fellowship — while hoping it would continue beyond the anniversary. Others called it safer than last year’s block party, which largely lacked a police or security presence.

James Davis, who has lived in Brooklyn Homes for 19 years, talked to people at the event, and said he appreciated how it brought people together. Davis said he typically doesn’t attend Brooklyn Day gatherings.

“This right here is nice,” he said.

Bishop John Watts of Kingdom Life Church, meanwhile, called the event amazing and said it exemplified love, community and protection. Watts was in the community earlier and encountered residents who weren’t sure whether they’d come, he said, worried about crowds or noise levels. Instead, community members are hugging and smiling inside the event, he said.

“That’s relationship,” Watts said. “Children, teens, everyone is being valued as humans.”

Yulanda Smallwood, who moved to Brooklyn Homes in 1979 at age 3, said she planned to walk through the event because her daughter was interested. She considered going, in part, because she heard from Safe Streets workers dropping flyers that it would be a more “quiet, peaceful” event.

Smallwood said she doesn’t typically attend Brooklyn Days, adding: “Brooklyn has got a reputation now.”

Despite efforts by the city and housing authority to help residents and improve security, she sees more that could be done. Fixing a baby pool, for instance, would benefit young people, she said. Or bringing back a recreation center for things like skating, dancing or karate.

City Councilwoman Phylicia Porter, who represents the Brooklyn neighborhood, called Tuesday’s event a “day of transformation, a day of redefining what Brooklyn Day has been in the past.”

In his statement, Scott added that city staff had built “deep and enduring” relationships in the wake of the mass shooting, through neighborhood stabilization efforts from the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement and through partnerships with residents and community groups.

“The Brooklyn community — and our city as a whole — will never be the same,” said Scott, adding that he hopes the relationships created will “help redefine the story of Baltimore.”

Police Commissioner Richard Worley, in a statement, added that his heart is with “the families, the Brooklyn neighborhood and our entire city that was impacted by this tragedy.”

The department, Worley said, has made “significant progress” in addressing its after-action review, strengthening its relationship with community members and “continually striving to do better.”

“While we have made several arrests of those responsible for this incident, the investigation continues and we are working closer than ever with all our partners to combat violence in Baltimore and to ensure the safety of all who live, visit and enjoy our great city,” Worley said.

Shooting victims

Five teenagers accused of participating in the chaotic shootout have been criminally charged; four have pleaded guilty to varying roles. None admitted to shooting anyone, despite four being charged with attempted murder. No one has been charged in the killings of Gonzalez and Kylis Fagbemi.

Two defense attorneys who’ve represented teens charged in connection with the mass shooting told The Baltimore Sun that they’re skeptical police will be able to charge anyone with homicide. The attorneys said the police cases lacked witnesses and relied in part on CCTV footage that showed “mayhem.”

Gonzalez’s brother, Shelborne, said he wants to see his sister’s killer caught, but he doubts it’s “realistic.”

“With how crazy Brooklyn Day was with all the shooters, I understand that it’s not an easy task. You just have to have faith and hope,” Shelborne said. “I want them to get everybody that shot a gun that day.”

At a Tuesday news conference outside the Brooklyn Homes event, Scott urged critics of the police’s lack of witnesses to see it from a “human” perspective. With that amount of people, and that number of guns, he said, “people are trying to save themselves.”

Worley added after the news conference that it was a “chaotic scene” and police don’t yet have the necessary ballistic evidence.

“We have to get someone who’s 100% sure they saw the correct person,” Worley said. “We have people who may have seen someone, but they can’t definitively say it was that person and, without that, there’s not enough ballistic evidence right now.”

The police department announced last week that it had completed its internal investigation into officer actions or inactions related to Brooklyn Day. Twelve employees were administratively charged and face disciplinary actions of days of docked pay. Two face termination, the department said. The investigative files have not been released, though The Sun has a pending request for the full case.

Without full information, it’s hard to draw definitive conclusions about where lapses were made, said William “Billy” Murphy Jr., who represents shooting victims and families of those affected. Murphy’s firm filed notices of intent to bring claims of negligence and intentional wrongdoing against Baltimore Police and other city agencies. He said in November that he believed the mass shooting could have been prevented.

“It will be vital for us to know where all of these people’s misbehavior fits into the overall scheme of things,” Murphy said last week. “Until we know that, this information doesn’t help us to determine what the breakdowns were in this incident.”

At Tuesday’s event in Glen Burnie, Aaliyah’s father George Gonzalez remembered giving her and her sister “100 kisses” when he arrived home from work each day.

“Now I’ll never be able to kiss her again,” he said.

Gonzalez said he was glad officers are facing discipline for their actions related to Brooklyn Day, but he would rather see stricter punishments for violent offenders and more “preventative strategies, rather than after-action reports” from police.

“Nothing will ease the pain, to be honest. It’s good to help bring awareness to this open wound,” said Aaliyah’s father, George Gonzalez. “You relive it every single day, blame everybody in the world but it still won’t bring your baby back.”