Reginald Jr. Peay, 40, a Black man, spent Friday, June 10, 2016 in Baltimore, and by that evening his name was being spoken in the past tense. Just after 7:30 p.m., gunfire erupted in the 2500 block of Keyworth Avenue in Northwest Baltimore. When officers arrived, they found him suffering from gunshot wounds, and paramedics rushed him to Sinai Hospital, where he died from his injuries.
In the hours that followed, the scene on Keyworth Avenue became part of a rapidly unfolding homicide investigation. Detectives were called in, and the public was urged to come forward with anything they might have seen or heard, with police directing tips to homicide investigators and offering an anonymous route through Metro Crime Stoppers. In the publicly available reports from that period, no suspect was identified and no arrest was announced in connection with the shooting.
As the city tried to piece together what happened on the street, his family and friends faced the immediate work of grief. An obituary notice recorded that he was born May 14, 1976, and died June 10, 2016, with services planned in the days that followed, including a viewing at a Baltimore funeral home and a funeral service at Unity United Methodist Church. Messages left in the online guest book remembered him with warmth and familiarity, the kind of words people reach for when a loss feels sudden and hard to explain.
