Two teens injured in Southeast Baltimore shooting Friday evening
Two teens were shot on North Potomac Street as Baltimore’s new summer youth push was taking shape. The case exposed the gap between city programming and violence still hitting Southeast neighborhoods.
A 15-year-old and a 17-year-old were shot in Southeast Baltimore on Friday evening, on the same side of the city where officials are trying to steer teens into summer programming, late-night rec centers and violence-intervention outreach.
Police said officers responded at 5:49 p.m. to the 1200 block of North Potomac Street after reports of gunfire. When they arrived, they found both boys suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to the body. The teens were taken to a nearby hospital and were listed in stable condition.
Detectives from the Southeast District took over the investigation, and police did not immediately release a motive or say whether they had identified a suspect. The shooting added another injury case to a neighborhood that has already seen repeated teen gunfire, including a May 2025 shooting on South Macon Street in which a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old were wounded and later reported stable at the hospital.
The incident also landed inside a larger public-safety picture in Southeast Baltimore. Baltimore Police’s Public Crime Map showed 2,766 crimes in the region so far in 2026, with shoplifting and larceny from auto making up a large share of reported offenses. The department says the map is built from General Offense Reports in its records system and is updated regularly, while its open-data crime set covers major crime from January 1, 2022 through the present and is updated weekly.
The shooting came as Mayor Brandon M. Scott’s office was promoting “In the Mix in ’26,” the city’s 2026 summer youth engagement strategy, announced May 13. The plan includes teen concerts, community block parties, pool parties, mobile recreation and YouthWorks jobs. Several Baltimore City recreation centers are scheduled to stay open until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights from June 26 through August 16.
The Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement began mobilizing community violence intervention and social work partners on March 27 for outreach through Labor Day weekend, including ground-level work where young people are likely to gather after curfew hours. City officials have said youth victimization in non-fatal shootings has fallen 57% since 2023, and youth aggravated assault victimization has dropped by more than 30%. Even with those gains, Friday’s shooting showed how quickly the city’s prevention strategy can collide with the reality still unfolding on neighborhood blocks.
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