Boy, 12, gravely wounded in NE Baltimore shooting

A 12-year-old boy is clinging to life after a quadruple shooting in Northeast Baltimore.

Sean Johnson is a seventh-grader at Montebello Middle School. Police say he's not expected to survive.

“I got a call from a friend and he was like, 'Sean, he's been shot,” said Reality Smith, who lives just down 25th Street from Sean Johnson.

She's known him her whole life. “I had no words. I couldn't believe that it was actually Sean,” she said.

Of course her whole life -- and Sean's -- have only spanned 12 years.

“Fun to be around. He was someone that everybody knew. Just one person that you would like to be in company with,” she said.

Friends say Johnson was never in any trouble. He played Pop Warner football for the East Baltimore Longhorns.

“When they were out here they were playing football, right up here up and down the street. They weren’t into the street stuff,” a friend of the boy’s mother said.

But Tuesday night, Johnson was on the front steps of a home in the 1700 block of Cliftview Avenue. He was with three other boys -- ages 19, 18 and 15.

Police say two men came up and began shooting. All four boys were hit. Sean Johnson's injuries are the most severe.

“My mother's been around here almost 51 years. This block was never like this,” another woman, who did not want to be identified, said.

She says if police got out of their cars and walked around Cliftview Avenue and the surrounding streets, they'd know more people in the neighborhood, which is just south of Clifton Park off Harford Road.

“They’re not doing their jobs,” she said. “They don't walk the beat here.”

And she said if police had been on foot more often, they might have a better chance of finding the suspects. Police leaders say too many foot patrols could slow response time in emergencies. Neighbors say that's not good enough.

“You need to come by and say 'Hello how are you doing? What's happening? We don't know those policemen at all,” the woman said.

Reality Smith stayed home from school on Wednesday -- too emotional about her friend Sean Johnson. She said she's saddened, and scared.

“So many people get killed, but it's that one person that you really know. And it's heartbreaking,” she said.

Residents say they want police to walk the beat more; police -- say they want those residents to step up. They feel someone has to know something about what happened Tuesday night.

Police say Sean Johnson is in 'grave' condition at Johns Hopkins.