Bus-stop murder brings ‘outrage,’ tears
The Examiner
Baltimore, MD
by Chris Ammann

BALTIMORE -- They gathered at the site of their friend’s slaying to cry out for answers. “Why did it have to be him?” asked eighth-grader Maryum Shadeed, a friend of Zecariah Hallback, 18, who was shot to death during a robbery on Jan. 9 while waiting for a bus at East 33rd Street and The Alameda.

At about 8 p.m., Hallback had just left a meeting of the Algebra Project, a national mathematics literacy campaign aimed at helping poor students, and was standing at the bus stop with two friends. A man at the bus stop pulled out a gun and demanded their money and cell phones, police said.

The robber ordered them into a back alley and told them to lie face-down on the ground. Then, police said, he shot Hallback in the head.

“He was a soft-spoken, nice kid,” said Baltimore NAACP President Marvin “Doc” Cheatham, who organized the rally Wednesday to ask citizens to come forward with information about the teen’s death. “He was very respectful, like all of the Algebra Project kids. This is a real tragedy. We shouldn’t lose any of these kids to homicide. It’s unimaginable. We have no other course of action but to take some sort of leadership role.”

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Baltimore City Public Schools employee Jay Gillen, who knew Hallbeck well, said he couldn’t believe the teen is gone. “Why can’t someone just wait at a bus stop?” Gillen asked.

Baltimore police Col. Rick Hite said he felt “outrage” at the killing.

“When the community grieves, the police department grieves,” he said. “We can’t let anyone victimize our kids.”

Cheatham said the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is asking citizens to render financial contributions to help cover the cost of burial expenses for Hallbeck’s family, which can’t afford the funeral.

“When you stand on a bus stop, you shouldn’t get robbed and get shot,” said Algebra Project member Unique McNeal, an eighth-grader at the Stadium School. “You should be able to stand on a bus stop and be safe without people hurting you. There’s too many people getting robbed, hurt and killed.”

Standing on the corner near the bus stop, the Rev. Heber Brown III prayed with about two dozen of Hallbeck’s friends.

“Lord, we are tired of seeing, year after year, how high our murder rate will go,” he said.

Baltimore City tracked 282 slayings last year. There have been six so far in 2008.