One dead, seven injured, in Baltimore after gunman fires on street barbecue

A gunman has killed one person and wounded seven others after firing indiscriminately into a crowd that had gathered for barbecue cookouts on a street in Baltimore.

Authorities said the gunfire broke out shortly after 5pm on Sunday on a block in the Maryland city’s western district.

Police commissioner Michael Harrison said a man approached a crowd on foot and began firing in what he called “a very tragic, very cowardly shooting”.

Speaking at the scene afterward, Harrison said the shooting appeared to be “extremely targeted” but he did not immediately elaborate on a possible motive.

The shooting comes roughly six weeks after Harrison’s swearing-in last month as Baltimore police commissioner, when he promised to make the city safer and lead the department through sweeping reforms required by a federal consent decree. It is a daunting task in one of the country’s poorest major cities where there have been more than 300 homicides in each of the past two years. Harrison is the city’s 14th police leader since the mid-1990s.

One man who was shot collapsed behind a Baptist church nearby and was pronounced dead at the scene. Harrison said the six other victims were taken to hospitals, but he did not release their names and had no immediate information on their conditions.

Harrison and Young urged members of the public to help investigators with any information as to a suspect or a motive.

“Someone knows something,” Young said. “These things ... they don’t happen by happenstance. People know who’s doing these shootings.”

The Baltimore Sun reported that bullet casings were found scattered on the ground near grills, and a table still had data-x-items on it that appeared to be left from a cookout.

Baltimore has been plagued by drug-fuelled violence for decades and it has long been considered one of the nation’s most violent cities. But the corrosive impact of the drug trade and illegal guns continue to spawn a recurrence of tit-for-tat turf wars in the city, particularly in west Baltimore.