Durrell Gaskins was stabbed on the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2013, in the 4000 block of Belle Avenue, near Garrison Boulevard in Northwest Baltimore, and died of his wounds. The Baltimore Sun's homicide database lists his age as 23, while news reports at the time gave it as 25. The Baltimore Police Department investigated, and the Sun's database lists his death as a homicide.
Gaskins lived on the block where he was stabbed.
According to his family, he was getting ready to leave for work when a large fight broke out on the street among students from nearby Forest Park High School. The Baltimore Sun reported that he worked as a mixer at Elite Spice in Jessup, and WJZ described him as the father of two. Police said a crowd of 30 to 50 students and young adults had gathered, and two young men were stabbed.
His family said he ran out to stop the fight. "Somebody else jumped in and hit him. They was fighting. Turned back around, he got stabbed," his niece, Jasmine Ward, told WJZ. "He wasn't trying to fight nobody, he was just trying to break it up," she told WBAL. His father, Durant Gaskins, said he reached his son on the sidewalk. "I saw him laying on the ground, and I went to shield him," he told the Sun. "I'm holding him. He looked up at me and said, 'Daddy, I don't think I'm going to make it,' and fell back."
"This was my only son, and he was a good son," his father told WBAL. "The thing that hurts so much is he was always the one trying to stop the trouble, and it cost him his life." Witnesses said the attackers ran off, and an aunt told WJZ that witnesses said they wore the school's uniform. A police spokesman, Lt. Eric Kowalczyk, told the Sun that detectives were "looking at what the relationships might have been and what might have transpired," and that police "have identified all the parties that are involved and are working on some investigative leads to close it."
On Saturday, Oct. 26, friends and family held a candlelight vigil at the spot where he fell. "A lot of people right now, he touched. To me, he was like the centerpiece of everything around here," a friend, Eric Duvall Jr., told WBAL. His father spoke directly to the killer: "The person who killed my son, we know you're out there. You can run, but you can't hide." Days after the stabbing, WBAL reported that police had made no arrests.
Belle Avenue runs through a residential stretch of Northwest Baltimore near Forest Park High School. Neighbors told the Sun that students regularly walked in groups down the avenue after school and that fights were common.
Baltimore recorded roughly 200 to 280 homicides a year between 2007 and 2014, one of the highest rates of any large American city, and many of those killings were never solved.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Durrell Gaskins could be found in news archives or public records. More than 13 years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Dozens of people were on Belle Avenue near Garrison Boulevard that October 2013 afternoon, and some of them, now adults, may remember who was carrying a knife. Even a small detail, such as a name overheard, a vehicle seen nearby or a conversation remembered, can help detectives move a case forward. Anyone with information can call Baltimore Police homicide detectives at 410-396-2100, or leave an anonymous tip with Metro Crime Stoppers of Maryland at 1-866-7LOCKUP (1-866-756-2587).
