My family and I went down to the Inner Harbor to watch the fireworks on the 4th. As the crowd shuffled off of Pier 6 after the show, we walked past a man lying on the ground bleeding from his neck just outside of McCormick & Schmick’s. (I was carrying my youngest child, with the other two beside me.) First responders were trying to apply pressure to the man’s wound, but it took a while before paramedics and an ambulance could work their way through the crowd. They had started chest compressions as they loaded the man into the ambulance.
26-year-old Joseph Calo had been visiting Baltimore from Alabama when he and his brother became involved in a shoving match with a group of other men, including 32-year-old Marcus Harris. The fight was broken up at first, but Calo and Marcus apparently “re-engaged” each other later on. Calo was stabbed in the neck with a broken bottle and died after being taken to the University of Maryland Medical Center.
It was a disturbing end to my family’s 4th of July celebration, less than 24 hours after I returned from Sama Sama, but it served as a reminder that violence can erupt anywhere and anytime. All the more reason for an “all blade, all the time” mentality, paired with training in mass attack and improvised weapons concepts …