Baltimore Smolders as Residents Rebuke Looters and Obama, Too

A night in Baltimore, before the curfew.

The remains of a senior center bus set ablaze during night riots are seen at dawn on April 28, 2015 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

The police car and van were parked head to tail, still smoldering hours after they'd been torched by rioters. They were bracketed by the clean, humming cars of gawkers and reporters, who had watched on TV as the intersection of North and Fulton was overtaken, the corner CVS looted then burned. By midnight, there was really nothing to see but wreckage and a colonnade of police officers, standing silently to block the streets that wound north and east. The whole world was watching, and nothing was on.

The people who remained were polite but dazed, unsure of how long to stay or what to do. All over the city it was like this—one block on fire, the next block pacified. Just around the corner from the burnt CVS, the lights were still on in some brightly decorated brownstones. Pierre Thomas, a 37-year old nurse who worked at the nearby VA hospital, wandered around looking for someone who could make use of his med kit. Alena Maze, a 29-year old mathematician, looked on silently until a radio reporter asked her if she was scared or bothered by what she saw.