BALTIMORE — On Maryland Cold Cases, our goal is to ensure victims and their families are not forgotten, and to bring cases back into the public eye in an effort to generate new details for law enforcement investigators.
A Baltimore mother is still searching for answers more than 20 years after her son was gunned down on a city street, hoping someone will finally come forward with information that could solve his cold case.
Linda Powell wrote a letter to WMAR-2 News seeking renewed attention for the unsolved homicide. Powell's only child, Mark Christian Gardner, was shot and killed in June 2005 near 29th and Greenmount Avenue in Baltimore City.
Gardner, a 24-year-old father who dreamed of becoming an electrical engineer, was out with friends the night he was murdered.
In her letter, Powell described her son as someone who "would give you the shirt off his back." Gardner, she told WMAR, loved his cousins like brothers and had aspirations of becoming a restaurant owner. He left behind two children who are now 26 and 27 years old.
READ MORE: Hoping to close a cold case involving a man murdered 15 years ago
"I just want the truth to come out. I just want closure," Powell said to WMAR-2 News in a 2020 report.
Powell has been pushing for justice for nearly two decades, refusing to let her son's case fade into obscurity.
This June will mark 21 years since Powell received the devastating news that her son had been shot dead.
"It's been hard, he was my only child, a gift from heaven. All children are a gift from heaven, but we had this bond, he could tell me anything, I could tell him anything," Powell said during the 2020 interview.
Gardner's case remains unresolved. Anyone with information is asked to contact Metro Crime Stoppers at 1-866-7-LOCKUP.
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This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
