Sitting in a turquoise chair outside of the East Baltimore rowhouse where she found her granddaughter shot and killed three days earlier, Trina Baker said she loved all her grandchildren.
Twelve-year-old Breaunna Cormley was no different. She was reserved, but she “had love.”
“She didn’t bother nobody. She was sweet, quiet and respectful,” Baker said Monday evening. “My heart hurts so bad for her.”
Baker arrived minutes after more than 50 community members held a vigil to honor Cormley’s life — and prevent anything like this tragedy from happening again.
Omar Passmore, 28, is accused of shooting and killing Cormley at the home on North Kenwood Avenue, a few blocks north of Patterson Park. He’s charged with first- and second-degree murder, use of a firearm during the commission of a crime of violence, reckless endangerment and related offenses.
Members of Cormley’s family remember her as a quiet but sweet girl who liked to stay home and spend time with her family.
“She ain’t leave her mother’s side, I know that,” said Talitha Coleman, a friend of Cormley’s family who watched both Breaunna Cormley and her mother grow up.
“She’s a homebody. She loves watching shows, loves helping out with her brothers and sisters,” she said.
Cormley was enrolled at the National Academy Foundation school, said Sherry Christian, a spokesperson for Baltimore City Public Schools, in an email. She played basketball at school, Coleman said.
Safe Streets, the city’s flagship violence-intervention program, helped organize the vigil. Several community leaders spoke into a megaphone calling on McElderry Park residents to do their part in ending gun violence. Freedom Jones, a director at LifeBridge Health’s Center for Hope, led the crowd in a chant. She shouted “No more,” and the crowd repeated it back to her — 12 times, once for each year that Cormley lived.
City officials, including City Council President Nick Mosby and his presumptive replacement Zeke Cohen, attended the vigil. Sheriff Sam Cogen spoke to the crowd briefly, saying he was there to try to figure out why this happened, and to do everything he could to prevent it from happening again.
Cormley’s family launched a GoFundMe with the goal of raising $12,000 for her memorial service, which is scheduled for Aug. 9. As of Monday evening, it raised $1,020.
The girl was home alone the night she died, Baltimore Police reported. Witnesses told police they heard “loud yelling” coming from inside the house. Passmore arrived at some point, police claim, then shot and killed Cormley for an “unknown reason.”
Passmore shares a child with Cormley’s mother, according to charging documents. Last year, a Baltimore judge granted Cormley’s mother a final protection from domestic violence order against Passmore.
On Monday, Baltimore District Judge Katie M. O’Hara ordered Passmore to continue to be held without bail.
Passmore’s attorney at the bail review hearing, Michelle Valenti, said she was remaining silent.
Meanwhile, Passmore is charged in Baltimore County with malicious destruction of property. His mother, Sylvia Wands, alleged that Passmore came to her apartment in Windsor Mill on May 25 and started cursing her out and throwing furniture. Passmore, she asserted, had been drinking.
Wands reported she ran out of her apartment and came back later to find that “everything was broken”: TVs, sound bars and bedroom furniture. Wands claimed that her tires were flat and there were bullet holes in her windshield.
”I was scared, I don’t feel safe around him,” she wrote in court documents, “I have not done anything to him, but to be a good mother to my sons, I have done my best as a mother to help him raise his children.”
Passmore has at least two other children: a 7-year-old son and a 6-year-old daughter.
Wands filed a complaint for custody on June 3 in Baltimore County Circuit Court for those two children. When asked why it would be in their best interest, she wrote, “Danger.”
In the days since Cormley’s killing, neighbors have collected balloons and stuffed animals on the stoop of her home. A few feet from the memorial Monday evening, family members and neighbors chatted about Cormley’s life and how they hoped the man accused of killing her would pay the price.
“Evil,” Baker said, shaking her head. “Just evil.”
Baltimore Banner reporters Lillian Reed and Giacomo Bologna contributed to this article.
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