Following the appearance of her family in the state Senate last week, a measure will be stricken from the Maryland General Assembly’s multifaceted juvenile justice bill so that separate legislation named in honor of NyKayla Strawder, who was fatally shot by a 9-year-old boy in 2022, can be passed.
Ahead of the 2024 legislative session, state Sen. Jill P. Carter, a Baltimore Democrat, filed Senate Bill 2 in honor of Strawder, the 15-year-old-girl who was shot to death on the porch of her West Baltimore home in 2022 by a 9-year-old boy after he gained access to his grandmother’s gun.
The boy’s grandmother, April Gaskins, was convicted of reckless endangerment and firearm access by a minor, and was sentenced last fall to four years in prison.
“I’m pleased my colleagues are choosing to honor the will of the family,” Carter said in a text message to The Baltimore Sun on Monday afternoon. “It’s the right thing to do as long as SB 2 passes both houses.”
Under the NyKayla Strawder Memorial Act, complaints alleging the involvement of children under 13 in the death of another would be mandatorily forwarded to the Department of Juvenile Services. Once received, intake officers would be required to file delinquency petitions or a Child in Need of Supervision, or CINS, petitions so that they can receive rehabilitative services.
Children are considered delinquent if they are alleged to have committed an act that would be considered a crime if committed by an adult. CINS petitions are for children who are required to attend school but are frequently absent, are unable to be controlled by their parents or guardians, are a danger to themselves or others, or commit crimes that only apply to children, like an underage drinking violation.
Carter first introduced the legislation in 2022, when it passed unanimously out of the Senate but did not make it out of the House Judiciary Committee.
Senate Bill 2 was folded into a larger juvenile justice bill sponsored by House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, Senate President Bill Ferguson, House Judiciary Committee Chair Luke Clippinger and Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chair Will Smith — all of whom are Democrats.
During last week’s hearing for Senate Bill 2, Carter said “the burning issue” was not only to pass the legislation but “extract” it from the larger bill.
“We talk a lot all day on these issues very anecdotally, very hypothetically, very generically about juveniles in the system, but here we have a real-life family with a real-life crisis,” Carter said. “Here we have real-life people [who] the system has not worked for.”
Smith told members of the Strawder family that Senate Bill 2 would advance out of his committee as it had in 2023.
Clippinger apologized to the Strawders for having wrapped the measures into the overarching juvenile justice bill.
“It was not the intent of the Speaker, Senate President, Chair Smith, or myself to offend the family in anyway,” Clippinger said in a statement provided to The Sun on Monday. “We will remove the language from the bill and consider Senator Carter’s SB2 should it pass the Senate.”
