BALTIMORE — Oak Hill Avenue is one of those rare streets in Baltimore; it is just one block long, the 1900 block, where Willie Smith has been sitting and living and watching for decades.
"30 years,” Smith said. [Are you getting tired of seeing stuff like this?] All day long," he responded.
This morning, Smith watched as Baltimore City Firefighters scrub his street clean, watching the blood from this city's latest murder wash away into the gutter and sewer.
Smith heard those shots, saw the man lie in the street.
It's not the block that's bad he says, it’s the kids that come over here through the alleys and do the shooting.
"Now, you afraid to come out of your door now because you don’t know if you gonna be safe or you gonna get robbed or whatever,” Smith said. “You a prisoner in your own home now."
Police had no answers -- at least not yet.
Homicide detectives canvassed the alleys just north of North Avenue but couldn’t tell us much beyond that the victim was killed just before 9:30 this morning.
It was the same story down North Avenue on the city's west side at Fulton.
Today only a bird's nest of crime tape remains but police say four people were shot here just after 10 o'clock Wednesday night.
One man was dead -- two others injured on scene; later, a 15-year-old would show up at an area hospital with a gunshot wound to his stomach.
Detectives hope someone saw something.
"This shooting occurred in a busy intersection on North Avenue so we're hoping someone saw something or heard something," Detective Jeremy Silbert said.
Back on the 1900 and lone block of Oak Hill Avenue, Willie Smith is tired of hearing and seeing it.
This morning -- a view of a man shot dead just steps from his own stoop.
"I'm tired of them,” Smith said. “I mean I am retired. I come here for peace. I retired from Morgan. I did 27 years at Morgan State and I'm retired now and I want peace and quiet."
