Jasmine Morris, was found killed on the bleachers at a high school football field on Tuesday morning, one of three women homicide victims found in a 13-hour span.
Authorities are puzzling over the highly unusual incidence of three women were found killed in less than 13 hours in Baltimore this week.
The spate of killings swept Allison Henn, 29, Kataya Nelson, 29, and 20-year-old Jasmine Morris. Since at least 2004, there have never been three women killed in the city in unconnected murders over such a short span, Baltimore police said.
Police are investigating all three deaths as homicides and have charged one man with the most recent killing.
The first shooting was in the 4800 block of Pimlico Road around 10:07 pm on Monday night. Cops got to the scene to find 29-year-old Allison Henn lying in the grass with a gunshot to the head. She was taken to the hospital where she was pronounced dead.
40 minutes later in the 200 block of North Fremont Ave. Officers found a 29-year-old Kataya Nelson lying on the ground unresponsive. She was also taken to a hospital where medics pronounced her dead.
Speaking on the death of their daughter, Allison Henn’s parents said for years, they’d lived in fear that their daughter’s heroin habit would kill her.
“We would not have been surprised by an overdose,” her mother Linda said as she sat at the family’s dinner table on Wednesday morning.
“But the violence,” her father Norman said, his voice trailing off.
Henn, 29, was fatally shot in Northwest Baltimore on Monday night, the first of three women who were found killed in the city in a 13-hour span.
Police do not believe the three killings are connected, spokesman T.J. Smith said. All three were “targeted” killings, he said.
Allison Henn, was the first of three women fatally shot in Northwest Baltimore on Monday night
Kataya Nelson, 29, was found unresponsive in West Baltimore on Monday night less than 45 minutes after Henn was discovered.
Police had responded to a report of a shooting in the 100 block of North Fremont Avenue in Poppleton and found Nelson on the next block down. She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Police have not released any motive or suspect information.
A relative said Nelson was a mother and that her funeral would be on Wednesday, but declined to comment further.
Residents of the block where she was killed and where a family member used to live said they were shocked that two young women had been killed in one night.
At 11:15 on Tuesday morning, police discovered the body of Jasmine Morris, 20, in the bleachers of a high school football field in the 2400 block of Westfield Ave. in Northeast Baltimore. Police said she was not breathing and had signs of trauma to her body. She was pronounced dead a short time later.
Police arrested 22 year-old Christopher Rather,in the death of Morris.
He has been charged with first- and second-degree murder, first- and second-degree assault and reckless endangerment in connection with Morris’s death.
Women are rarely victims of the more than 300 homicides that the city has recorded in each of the last three years. Since at least 2004, there have never been three women killed in the city in unconnected murders over such a short span.
Of more than 2,500 homicides in Baltimore over the past 10 years, 9% of the victims were women. Sixteen women have been killed so far this year, making up 13% of the city’s homicide total as of Friday morning.
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