Baltimore Police seek shooting suspect's identity as Dunbar High students return to class

BALTIMORE — Police are seeking the identity of a person believed to be the suspect in a shooting that wounded a 15-year-old student Monday afternoon near two East Baltimore schools.

Police said Wednesday that they were seeking the person, whose features are muddled in blurry surveillance footage, in connection with the shooting near Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in East Baltimore. A spokesperson confirmed Thursday that the person, who is clad in a light-colored hoodie and black pants as they appear to be running, is a suspect in the shooting on North Caroline Street that set off a ShotSpotter alert at around 3:30 p.m. Monday.

Metro Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of up to $4,000 for tips that lead to an arrest.

The shooting near the National Academy Foundation critically wounded a 15-year-old Dunbar High student around both schools’ dismissal times. The teen underwent emergency surgery and has been in stable condition since then.

On recorded radio dispatch calls from the shooting, Central District officers are heard scrambling to find the shooter while others render aid to the teen, who an officer said was shot three times — once in the neck. As the student is being taken to a hospital, officers are heard giving conflicting accounts of what the suspected shooter is wearing, and detectives ask for a metal detector and a canine to find evidence near the foundation, which was once Dunbar Middle School.

The afternoon shooting prompted both Dunbar High School and the foundation to close for students the next day, with counseling available for students and staff. A handful of students streamed in and out of the school Tuesday afternoon while Baltimore City Public Schools maintenance crews repaired electrical equipment near the scene of the shooting. A group of students said that they had come to visit one of their teachers as they packed into a car.

Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners Chair Ronald McFadden didn’t directly reference the shooting at a Tuesday evening board meeting but noted that “we’ve also had a couple of our young people who were involved in some shootings here in the city.”

“I’ve been saying this is not something we can normalize,” McFadden said, offering support to the families of students at schools affected by recent gun violence.

“It is not an exciting time of our meeting to have to acknowledge these things, but it’s important that we do,” he said.

Dunbar High administrators welcomed students back with doughnuts on an otherwise quiet Wednesday morning. The East Baltimore institution has previously seen nearby gunfire interrupt school events, most recently during a football game last September, where a 12-year-old boy was wounded in a shooting next to the William F. “Sugar” Cain Dunbar Stadium.

Those with information on the identity of the suspect in Monday’s shooting are urged to contact Metro Crime Stoppers of Maryland at 1-866-7Lockup.

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