Darren Nicholson was 27 years old when he died of blunt force injuries he suffered in the 3200 block of Brendan Avenue in Northeast Baltimore. Police found him there in the early hours of Sunday, July 3, 2016, and he died eight days later, on Monday, July 11. His death was not added to the city's homicide count until Wednesday, September 7, 2016, when the medical examiner ruled it a homicide.
The Baltimore Police Department investigated, and the Baltimore Sun's homicide database lists his death as a homicide.
According to Fox45, officers responded at 1:30 a.m. on July 3 "to a home on Brendan Avenue near Findlay Road in the Belair-Edison neighborhood for a reported aggravated assault." There they found Nicholson "suffering from an apparent skull fracture." He was taken to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he stayed for eight days before he "succumbed to his injuries." The Sun's notes say he "was found suffering from skull fractures on July 3" and "died on July 11," and that the date in its database "reflects the date his death was added as a homicide."
When police announced the ruling in September, they said medical examiners had found that he died of "blunt force trauma." The Baltimore Sun's weekly Murder Ink column reported that Nicholson "had lived on the 2800 block of Mayfield Avenue, walking distance from where he was killed." Police did not publicly describe what led to the assault, who else was at the home, or whether detectives had identified anyone they wanted to question. The two-month gap between the attack and the homicide ruling meant that the case reached the public long after the night it happened, which may have made it harder for anyone who saw something to connect it to a killing.
Little else about his life has been made public. A memorial page created by his family through a funeral service lists him as Darren A. Nicholson and gives his dates as June 20, 1989, to July 11, 2016, but it carries no written obituary. No news story described his work, his friends or his family, and no fundraiser or vigil for him could be found. The people who knew him are the ones who could best say who he was.
Belair-Edison is a residential neighborhood in Northeast Baltimore, made up largely of brick rowhouses with front porches along streets that run off Belair Road. Brendan Avenue and Mayfield Avenue are both part of that grid of homes, and the Sun noted that the house where he lived was within walking distance of the place where he was hurt.
After the unrest of 2015, Baltimore recorded more than 300 homicides a year for eight straight years, and the share of killings that ended in an arrest fell sharply.
No arrest, criminal charge or court case connected to the death of Darren Nicholson could be found in news archives or public records. More than ten years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. Someone who was at or near the home on Brendan Avenue near Findlay Road in the early morning of July 3, 2016, or who heard talk about a fight in Belair-Edison that summer, may know what happened to him. When police first released the case, they asked anyone with information to call detectives at 410-396-2221. 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).
