For now, Baltimore City police are simply calling it a suspicious death, but the discovery of a man's body wedged inside a shopping cart in a back alley off McElderry Street has left neighbors searching for answers.
"Whatever they did, they pushed that cart down here. That's what I think," said Deborah Brown who was visibly shaken by news of the gruesome discovery. "At least I know it's not anybody on my block, but it's still a person. It's a human. Then I heard he had a plastic bag over his head and his pants pockets were out. Then I heard it was a male... an older man. I don't know how old, and I heard he had tattoos."
While police remained tightlipped over details surrounding the victim's death, they could do little to conceal the body and other evidence as they processed the scene.
""They say they had to break up his legs and stuff to get him out of the shopping cart," said Valerie Boone.
Meanwhile, just around the corner, teens with the city's YouthWorks summer job program tried to focus on picking up trash from the sidewalks---not the convergence of police cars, uniformed officers and crime scene tape.
"Our goal was to basically beautify the neighborhood so we had to get straight to work. So it was a distraction at first," said Andrew Britt.
A distraction that begs for answers in the absence of any visible signs of trauma on the victim, and whether he was killed or died from some other means, say an overdose for instance, there's no question in this community, he deserved far more than to be discarded like trash in a random alleyway.
"You know he's probably got family somewhere,” said Boone. “So just pray for them or whatever."
One person who lives in the neighborhood reports they walked their dog in that area around midnight, and there was no sign of the shopping cart.
At this point, police have not identified the victim.
