Baltimore stays under 300 killings for first time in years. It’s little comfort for families whose ‘light was snatched.’

Krystal Gonzalez was preparing for an event recently when she opened one of her daughter’s journals to a page of self-affirmations written out by Aaliyah.

I am important. I communicate clearly and effectively. I am not afraid to speak my mind and do it respectfully. I maintain my character. 

She read the lines in her 18-year-old daughter’s voice, and then “fell apart.”

“People don’t know just how dope she was,” Gonzalez told The Baltimore Sun during an interview in December. “They don’t know what a loss this is.”

Aaliyah’s killing in the July mass shooting at an annual Brooklyn Day neighborhood block party was one of 262 in Baltimore in 2023, a year that will be remembered as the first in almost a decade where the death toll stayed below 300 homicides.

The 300 mark has since 2015 served as a disturbing touchstone for the city’s unrelenting violence. Officials say the media has inflated the significance of the figure: Whether 299 or 301 people are killed, one is too many. Still, officials acknowledge its symbolic power, including as a litmus test for mayors, and its ability to elude leaders in recent years.

The decline in homicides coincided with a slight decrease year over year in nonfatal shootings, yet the number of gun violence victims under the age of 18 rose.

Staying below 300 homicides — and achieving a double-digit reduction in slayings — is significant progress, said Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, a Democrat running for reelection in November. Researcher Daniel Webster, too, said it’s important to give the city credit, particularly as other municipalities see slower progress or even upticks in slayings.

But it’s little comfort for Gonzalez and likely many other families left mourning, even as they join city leaders in hoping it marks the start of a steady decline in violence.

Aaliyah was more than a photo on the news, Gonzalez said.

Her daughter had a magnetic personality and welcoming spirit that drew strangers toward her. She was willing to give what she had to others and wanted to be better for people in her life, at times prompting her mother’s call to be a little easier on herself. She wanted to be part of something.

“I never want to forget those memories,” Gonzalez said.

Cities across the country are expected to see about a 10% to 12% decline in killings this year, according to Webster, a Johns Hopkins University professor who studies gun violence.

Baltimore is outpacing that rate, with a more than 20% drop in homicides compared to last year.

The change in trajectory — after seven years of more than 300 murders — likely doesn’t have a simple explanation. The mayor points to his comprehensive violence reduction strategy and investments in community violence intervention. The police commissioner, Richard Worley, attributes it to better partnerships and a group violence reduction strategy, known as GVRS, making headway despite hiccups in its roll out to additional police districts.

The reality, Webster said, is that any single gun violence strategy is rarely a cure-all. Reductions take a confluence of elements working together.

Baltimore’s recent success, for example, is likely some combination of its flagship anti-violence program, Safe Streets, alongside the expanding GVRS initiative, with the potential help of a new prosecutor’s administration or statewide changes to gun laws, he said. Additional factors for the number dropping could include the nation taking steps toward normalcy following the pandemic or be as simple as a better job by police of apprehending shooters.

Credit, too, could be doled out widely: the mayor, the city state’s attorney, the U.S. attorney and people working in the “trenches” doing mediation or anti-violence work, Webster said. Preventing one person from resorting to violence might in turn prevent a wave of retaliatory shootings.

Whatever the contributing factors, Webster doubts it’s a “fluke.”

“Clearly, something is working better than it had been,” he said. “The real test will be: Can you continue to bring it down in 2024?”

Scott in 2021 pledged an annual 15% reduction in gun violence over the next five years. He said in an interview that people then laughed at the goal, saying Baltimore would never see such a drop.

“Not only did we do it, we beat that number,” Scott said. “More importantly, we did it at the same time we’re hearing illegal arrests are down. We’re doing it the right way.”

A recent assessment indicated officers were making fewer arrests without probable cause, an issue highlighted by the federal government in its scathing 2016 review that led to a policing consent decree with the city in 2017. But even as the police department has seen bright spots this year — slightly better clearance rates for homicides and nonfatal shootings, high gun seizures — challenges remain. 

Brooklyn Day shook public trust in police and other city agencies. And, disturbingly, young people are being shot at higher rates than previously seen.

Councilman Mark Conway, a Democrat representing neighborhoods in North Baltimore who leads the City Council’s Public Safety and Government Operations Committee, cited “very worrying” rates of young people being shot as one priority for 2024.

He pointed to recent statistics shared by the Baltimore Police Department that recorded a reduction in young people killed in 2023, but a double-digit year-over-year increase in nonfatal shootings. As of Dec. 26, 16 people aged 17 and younger were killed, compared to 20 in 2022. But 94 were shot and wounded, up from 72 in 2022 — a 30.5% increase.

“When you’re looking at homicides versus shootings, if you put that bullet in one or two inches in either direction, that’s life or death,” Conway said.

Gun violence that afflicted young people made headlines this year: a multiple victim shooting involving students across from Edmondson-Westside High School, a 16-year-old dishwasher gunned down at a park near his East Baltimore school and the jaw-dropping 30-victim shooting during Brooklyn Day, where over three-quarters of victims were teenagers.

Webster said he hopes to see Baltimore be more “intentional” toward the issue in the coming year. He’s expressed skepticism that traditional mediation efforts through Safe Streets are effective in reaching young people — and hopes to see the city examine what works to curb youth violence.

“How do we address the gun access issue? How do we address the social media phenomenon?” he asked, referring to the idea that “beefs” between young people can grow online, and allow perpetrators to track where targets are in real time.

Public safety is expected to play a pivotal role in May’s mayoral primary, as is common in Baltimore politics. Scott’s principal Democratic challenger, former Mayor Sheila Dixon, has honed in on crime in her campaign, acknowledging declines in violent crime, but pointing to a spike in auto thefts as a concern for residents.

In the “dark” period immediately after she lost her daughter, Gonzalez would walk endlessly, unable to sit still.

With every step, she would talk to God and to Aaliyah. Sometimes she would hug herself and feel her daughter’s embrace. Other times, she’d hold her hand out by her side, empty without the hand she imagined holding.

“I could not see how I could live, missing her,” Gonzalez said. “How do you all of a sudden move without this huge part of your life?”

Aaliyah Gonzalez may not be a typical Baltimore homicide victim — she was a woman, not a man, was younger than the average victim, and was from Glen Burnie rather than the city.

But her death in the July mass shooting was one that captured the city’s attention, rising above the daily fray. When Baltimore looks back on 2023, it will remember the Brooklyn Day tragedy alongside any optimism about homicide rates.

For Gonzalez, the only way she’s found to make meaning of Aaliyah’s killing is to turn it into purpose.

She’s spoken about her daughter to town halls and at City Council hearings, including one she brought to a stunned halt with her moving testimony. She’s working to bring anti-gun violence education into schools. And she’s urged people to see the Brooklyn Day shootings as a “mirror” held up to illuminate the needs of underserved or under-resourced communities.

“The only way I can honor her is to continue to shine her light on this world,” Gonzalez said of Aaliyah. “Because she was snatched. That light was snatched.”

Even now, she still reaches for her phone to call her daughter. In one recent instance, she went to share the progress she’d made connecting with schools about anti-gun violence programming, only to remember Aaliyah is gone, and the reason for her activism.

Gonzalez’s family has joined a group of survivors and victims’ families that has said it could sue the city. Other steps are less clear, but Gonzalez knows she’ll be motivated by her daughter.

“Everything I do is always going to be honoring her,” she said. “I don’t know what that looks like. Every day is unfolding, every day is different. Because my whole life is different. But whatever it is that I do, I’m making sure to include her in it.”

Baltimore Sun reporter Angela Roberts contributed to this article.