This story is part of a special project by Urbanite magazine that grew out of the unrest in Baltimore following Freddie Gray’s funeral in April. Find the whole thing here.
When all else failed, Freddie could run.
As a boy facing long odds in school and life, he would outrace friends on the football field and blow by them on the basketball court. As those odds played out when he was a young man, when he dealt drugs and made himself a presence in West Baltimore’s streets, projects, and alleyways, he’d run from the heat.
Freddie’s strategy—leave them grabbing at air—didn’t always work. He was arrested a dozen and a half times. But movement is freedom. Without fail, he’d run.
So when, on a sunny spring Sunday morning at the corner of North and Mount, right outside the King Grocery Mart where Freddie Gray often hung out with his boys despite the “No Loitering” sign, he and a Western District police lieutenant riding a bike toward the corner from the east briefly locked eyes, Freddie was off. The bike cop, who’d been riding in formation with three other officers, took off in pursuit.
[For more of this story, written by Michael Anft, go to http://www.citylab.com/crime/2...-running-man/414951/]
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