The police and protesters were facing off for a showdown in an intersection outside CVS, and members of the media were there to bear witness. Baltimore had quickly emerged as the new ground zero for the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement, but the threat of ongoing violence was getting all the news.Īs day faded into night, the nation wondered if more fires and mayhem would come. My destination was a CVS drugstore in West Baltimore that had been torched the day before and had already become a symbol of civil unrest and the center of the city's riots. Gray had been allegedly illegally arrested-even State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby later stated so-before he was shackled, thrown in the back of a van without being strapped in, and given a 'rough ride' that is believed to have severed his spine. The night before, a rebellion had begun in Baltimore in response to the death of twenty-five-year-old Freddie Gray while in police custody, on April 12. That unseemly co-optation festered in my mind as I drove forty miles up I-95 to a city on fire. The caucasity of the crowd couldn't be ignored.
