Nijenae Allen, 22, died on Friday, August 25, 2017, after she was stabbed in the 1000 block of Hillen Street in Baltimore. The Baltimore Police Department investigated, and the Baltimore Sun's homicide database lists her death as a homicide, with a short note that it was a quadruple stabbing.
Police said officers were sent to the block at about 2:59 a.m. for a reported cutting.
According to Fox45, detectives learned that "after leaving a local lounge, an earlier dispute turned into a physical altercation," and three women were stabbed. A fourth person later walked into a hospital "seeking treatment for knife wounds." The Baltimore Sun reported that the women had been at a lounge and that police believed "an earlier dispute turned violent" after they left. Allen was taken to Mercy Medical Center, where she died later that day. Police said she had been stabbed in the neck and chest.
The scene told detectives very little at first. WMAR-TV reported that when officers arrived, no victims or suspects were left on the block. "It was pretty much like a ghost town," Detective Donny Moses said, "at least there were no victims or suspects there." Police only began to piece the night together when the injured women turned up at area hospitals.
Moses told WMAR that police had a person of interest in Allen's killing, but he made clear that they needed more help. "We need people to help us out with information and we have been doing well with that," he said. "In this case a young lady lost her life, I know the family wants closure. If the suspect is in fact the suspect, she needs to be charged so...whatever people have, we are inviting that info." His words suggest that the person police were looking at was a woman, but police never publicly named anyone. A community list of the city's 2017 homicides describes the case as a "quadruple stabbing outside Ace Lounge" and shows no one charged. No obituary or family fundraiser for her could be found for this story.
Hillen Street at that point sits in the Penn-Fallsway area, a small pocket on the eastern edge of downtown near the Jones Falls Expressway. WMAR noted that the lounge was supposed to be on the block "but there isn't much there," and Moses described the block as nearly empty at that hour.
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 Nijenae Allen could be found in news archives or public records. More than nine years later, there is no public sign that anyone has been held responsible. The fight involved several people who knew one another well enough to have had an earlier dispute, and other patrons may have seen how it began inside the lounge. Anyone who was at a lounge near the 1000 block of Hillen Street late on August 24 or early on August 25, 2017, or who heard talk about the fight afterward, may hold the detail detectives still need. 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).
