Get this… this is a story about two men. So there’s this man, right? And it’s like 4am and he gets jacked in West Baltimore. A man comes up to him and pulls out a sawed-off shotgun and tries to rob him. In response, the man getting robbed pulls out hisfake handgun. Somehow, fake-handgun man takes the shotgun away from shotgun man.
Fake-handgun man, shotgun in hand, orders the man formerly known as shotgun man to strip naked in the middle of street. Fake-handgun man takes $800 from now-naked man and then marches naked man into a nearby laundry room. There, fake-handgun man (now actually new shotgun-man) starts beating the naked man with the butt of naked-man’s sawed-off shotgun. The man wearing clothes is shouting that he’s going to kill naked man unless naked man gets moremoney. Or a cell phone. Or something.
You still with me? Wack, wack! “You better get me some more money, bitch!” Wack. “N***a, I’m going to kill you if don’t get me some motherfucking cash or a cell phone!”
BOOM!!! The shotgun goes off. I imagine this as a movie moment: two men; a fight; one loud gunshot.
A pause.
[Bang bang, I shot you down.]
The shotgun flies against the wall from recoil and clatters to the ground. Blood is everywhere.
The men look at each other. Who got shot? Who’s going to slid down the wall, leaving a trail of blood behind him!?
[Bang bang, you hit the ground.]
Here’s the irony, it’s hard to give someone a good beatdown holding the butt-end of a sawed-off shotgun. There’s not enough weight in the barrel for swinging leverage. The man giving the beatdown (aka robbed-man, fake-handgun-man, man-now-holding-the-shotgun and man-now-banking-a-naked-man) is holding the barrel of the gun to better hit with.
[Bang bang, that awful sound.]
The shotgun round rips through the stomach of the man holding the gun. He’s dead.
The naked man runs away and ends up in the E.R. to treat cuts he gets from running barefoot over glass-strewn streets.
Now I suspect there’s a little more to this story than meets the eye, and the complete Sunaccount is here. A sergeant in the homicide unit says, “It is sort of like one for the books.”
[Bang bang, my baby shot me down.]
The death will be ruled accidental.