BALTIMORE — A 1-year-old baby girl will never be in her moms arms again.
20-year-old Yasmine Wilson was shot and killed while walking down North Rose Street with her daughter Charleigh in a stroller.
The kids in that neighborhood should be playing and thinking about camp— not spending one night running into their homes in fear and another thinking about the image of a woman being killed.
Courtney is 9 years old, she saw what happened. “We were out here doing cartwheels and stuff and I just saw a car run past and a lady strolling her baby and someone just shot her,” said the little girl.
Dante Barksdale, a leader of Safe Streets, and other members of the organization, brought their megaphones to send a loud message. “People are not meeting their basic needs,” Barksdale said. “I don’t know why the woman was shot, we just know that it’s not normal and stuff like that shouldn’t be happening.” Barksdale wanted the kids to hear the message to help them process what they are seeing. “If you know that a kid has seen some stuff like that you want to kind of talk to them and let them know that kind of behavior is not even normal.”
As the sun went down, Wilson’s friends and family started to fill the space where she was taken from them. “She has a 1-year-old daughter that they left behind with nothing,” her mother Saundra Waddell said. Candles glistened in tears as balloons headed to the sky.
“These guys need to stop being cowards and shooting people,” said Waddell. “It’s crazy, I don’t know what Baltimore City is coming to. I want to take my granddaughter and leave.” The shooter is out there. Kids were out there— people were out there.
1-year-old Charleigh’s mom is gone.
“Bad, nervous, sad about it,” said 11-year-old Pierre Chance. “I feel bad about people who are dying.” It's a story of mothers and children shouldn’t have to tell.
The family has set up a GoFundMe to help with raising young Charleigh and funeral expenses for Yasmine.
