A previously created memorial, right, stands as Baltimore police work at a scene where multiple people were shot in Baltimore on Sept. 24, 2016. Photo / AP
A previously created memorial, right, stands as Baltimore police work at a scene where multiple people were shot in Baltimore on Sept. 24, 2016. Photo / AP
By Olivia Lambert
From the outskirts, Baltimore looks like an all-American town - the birthplace of the national anthem, famous for its crab shacks, and the home of the Baltimore Ravens.
But the Maryland city is in the grip of a violent crime epidemic, dubbed "murder city" for its status as one of the most dangerous places to live in the US.
This week, community advocates and leaders reached crisis point after a "nobody kill anybody" ceasefire failed to last 72 hours.
Despite daily rallies and vigils, just 41 hours went past without a death, before a 24-year old man was shot and an elderly man beaten to death.
World War II veteran Wadell Tate, 97, died in his pyjamas inside the home he had lived in for 60 years after a violent intrusion by burglars, the Washington Post reported.
His daughter, Sylvia Swann, 65, said "they took away his right to die on his own."
More than 200 people have been murdered in the city already this year - double the rate of Chicago. It could see as many as 400 homicides in 2017, a per capita record for the United States, and in some months, the number of murders exceeds the number of days.
As a result, a young black man in Baltimore faces as great a risk to his life as an American soldier at the height of the war in Iraq.
Erricka Bridgeford helped organise the recent ceasefire after her cousin was shot dead in 2015 and said while it might seem shocking, the statistics were encouraging.
"Forty-one hours of peace is a huge deal in a city that loses people every 19 hours," said the 44-year-old, who grew up on these streets.
"I go to about three or four funerals a year."
She is convinced the weekend ceasefire, which she had been preparing for two months, saved at least two lives. More importantly, she says, it helped the city experience what day-to-day life could be like.
"There is like a different energy that we created together," she said.
Attorney-General Jeff Sessions said violent crime was up 22 per cent and murders up 78 per cent in 2016 as the city has been plagued by racial tension and anger.
Last year was the second deadliest year in Baltimore, with 318 murders. It was second to 2015, where 344 murders occurred. According to Baltimore city data, there were 211 killings recorded in 2014 and 233 recorded in 2013.
Freddie Gray died in police custody. Photo / Supplied
Tensions on a knife edge
There is little trust between residents and police as the city struggles with the aftermath of 2015 riots following the death of Freddie Gray, 25. Gray suffered a fatal spine injury while being transported in the back of a police van with his hands and feet bound.
In April, a federal judge required the Baltimore police to implement sweeping reforms.
The Baltimore city government and police agreed last year, but the administration of US President Donald Trump, promising to empower police to crack down on crime, has sought to delay and modify the reforms.
The recent tension is part of a long history of high-profile crime. One of the city's most notorious events occurred in 1968 when four children under the age of 10 were found mutilated in the bushes inside Baltimore's Leakin Park.
Larry, 9, and Matt Jefferson, 5, Louis Hill, 10, and Lester Watson, 10, were killed in the late 60s by janitor Reginald Vernon Oates, 18 in a horrifying crime with details to graphic to report.
Hae Min Lee's body was found in Baltimore's Leakin Park. Photo / Supplied
International attention
The area's grisly history was thrust into the international spotlight again in 2015 with the true-crime podcast Serial that investigated the murder of Baltimore schoolgirl Hae Min Lee, who disappeared in January 1999. Her body was found in Leakin Park a month later.
Host Sarah Koenig, said in the show: "If you're digging in Leakin Park to bury your body, you're going to find somebody else's".
That followed another high-profile murder involving a man named Richard Nicolas and his daughter Aja. He is now serving 20 years in a maximum-security prison for shooting and killing the two-year-old after picking him up from her mother's house in 1996.
It was the first time they would spend an evening together alone, and Nicolas planned to take her to the local cinema in Baltimore to watch Pinocchio. Instead, Aja was shot and killed.
Nicolas has always pleaded his innocence and said he was driving down a Baltimore road when a black car started following and intimidating him. He claimed the car rammed his Chevrolet Cavalier and the driver shot his daughter and drove off.
For Bridgeford, who has lost "two or three" friends to shootings and had two of her three brothers shot, the ceasefire was a step in the right direction towards eradicating gang violence, revenge killings, drug abuse and extreme poverty.
According to Fox News, police believe drugs and gangs are the reason for the high crime rate in Baltimore.
Director of anti-violence organisation Safe Streets, Gardnel Carter, said young people see their only escape in video games and drugs including synthetic painkillers sold on prescription.
"You got young and younger people hooked on them. They walk around like zombies, on top of the mental health issues they are dealing with," said Carter, who himself was imprisoned for 20 years for murder.
It's gotten so bad that authorities are now asking themselves keeping people with lesser offence behind bars longer "to save people from themselves," a spokesman for the Baltimore police, TJ Smith, told AFP.
A man walks past a corner where a victim of a shooting was discovered in Baltimore in July 30, 2015. Photo / AP
"What we see is a lot of people who could be in jail if they had stiffer sentences and wouldn't have been on the street at the time of their demise," Smith said.
More than 85 per cent of victims have a criminal record, he adds. For Smith, the ceasefire was "absolutely not a failure" because of the conversation it helped trigger.
Smith has become the public face of every new shootout, its victims and its perpetrators.
He will never forget the 173rd murder of 2017: his own brother, shot dead.
"For me to be on the victim side of this, of course it's different," he says. "Of course it hurts in a different way than talking about a stranger at the podium."
