Man recovering at Shock Trauma after shooting in Aberdeen

BALTIMORE -- Aberdeen police are still looking for the gunman involved in a shooting that happened Monday night.

A quiet evening on Baltimore Street in Aberdeen was interrupted by gunshots.

"I thought when I heard it, I thought it was firecrackers at first, but it turned out it wasn't," Evelyn Stevens of Aberdeen said.

Evelyn Stevens said just before 9 p.m. she was watching TV when she heard them.

"I looked out my window and I heard sirens coming and we had ambulances, firetrucks, police were here," Stevens said.

Aberdeen police say James Kelly, 31, was found lying in the street with a gunshot wound to his chest.

His injuries were so severe he had to be flown to Shock Trauma.

"We're very much in the blind concerning this," Aberdeen Police Department Capt. Will Reiber said.

Investigators tell WJZ they are working to learn who shot Kelly and why.

They're talking to neighbors and trying to track down surveillance video, but need the public's help.

"We're trying to find out as much information as possible and we know that someone out there knows something about this," Reiber said.

Stevens has lived on Baltimore Street for nearly 30 year and says shootings like this are rare in Aberdeen.

"I was dumbfounded, because, like I said, we've never had anything like that around here before," Stevens said.

We checked with police, in 2020 and 2021 there was only one shooting both years and no homicides.

That changed last year when there was an uptick in violence. Six people were shot in five different shootings and there was one homicide.

In 2023, there have been two shootings and one homicide.

Stevens is hoping she never hears gunshots in her neighborhood again.

"You hear about it on the news all the time, people getting shot, but when it happens right in your own neighborhood, it makes you sit up and think more," Stevens said.

The victim in this shooting is expected to survive his injuries.