HS basketball star murdered in Baltimore City

A local high school basketball player with the hope of going pro and the talent to make it happen has been gunned down on the streets of Baltimore.

17-year-old John Crowder was shot and killed early this morning near his grandmother’s home in East Baltimore.

One of John Crowder's AAU coaches told ABC-2 News that at least seven coaches from NCAA Division One basketball programs around the country called him on Monday, to offer their condolences.

‘The scouts had been watching him for years, his basketball,’ said Addie Brice, Crowder’s grandmother.

John Crowder was six-feet, seven-inches tall, and still growing. ‘Every time you see him, he was grinning. I brought him up in the church,’ Brice said.

Crowder played for Our Lady of Mount Carmel High School in Essex, after playing for Towson Catholic, which closed last year.

Crowder's mother died in 1995, when he was just 14 months old. Recently, he'd moved back in with his grandmother on Kirk Avenue in East Baltimore, a move that worried her. ‘I said you just be out there with your homeboys, you don't have to be doing anything you can get in trouble just being there,’ Brice said.

Her worst fears were realized early Monday morning, when someone shot Crowder along Garrett Avenue, a couple blocks from his grandmother's home. She said he was walking back to her house, after walking friends home. Rescue crews got him to Johns Hopkins, but he died in surgery. Whoever shot my grandson in the back, I can't believe that. Why?’ Brice said. ‘He was looking forward to going to college, that's for sure. He said he was going to go to college and make professional one day and all of that. That was his dream.’

John Crowder's grandmother said he did have prior run-ins with the juvenile justice system, but she believes he was not involved with drugs or gangs.

Police do not have any suspects in Crowder's murder.