Police charge Baltimore man in deadly Harford Road bar shooting

Nearly six months after a fatal shooting outside Freddie’s Sports Bar and Grill on Harford Road, Baltimore police say a city man has been charged in the killing of Keyon Smith. Investigators say the case turned after an interview Thursday, when Jimmy Charles, 36, confessed to shooting Smith just after midnight on Dec. 7.

Police said the shooting call came in at about 12:01 a.m. on Dec. 7, 2025, in Northeast Baltimore. Officers found Smith, 28, on the 3000 block of Rosalie Avenue with multiple gunshot wounds. Medics pronounced him dead at the scene. WBAL-TV reported that Smith, also known as “Cheetah,” was well known around Freddie’s and that a bar worker described the night as relatively quiet, with cold, rainy, snowy weather keeping the room slow.

Charles was arrested Friday and later held without bond Monday, according to FOX45. Court records summarized by the station show he faced first- and second-degree murder charges, along with three felonies, two misdemeanors and one firearm offense. He did not have an attorney listed at the time of the report.

The killing and the arrest tie directly to one of Northeast Baltimore’s familiar nightlife strips, where Harford Road carries both neighborhood traffic and late-night crowds. The charge does not erase the gap between the shooting and the arrest, but it does show how homicide cases can hinge on interviews, records and evidence gathered over time. For Smith’s family and friends, that delay meant months without an answer. For nearby businesses, the case is a reminder that even a single shooting outside a well-known bar can linger over a block long after police tape comes down.

The arrest also lands against a broader decline in violent crime citywide. Baltimore officials said the city ended 2025 with 133 homicides, the fewest in nearly 50 years. Police also reported year-over-year declines of 31% in homicides and 24% in nonfatal shootings in 2025, part of a continuing drop in gun violence. Even so, the Harford Road case shows that lower totals do not shorten the pain in individual neighborhoods, where one homicide can still define a season for a family, a bar and the people who live nearby.