Internet Business & Strategy

A star high school basketball player was shot and killed in Baltimore early this morning, one of several victims in a series of apparently unrelated overnight shootings.

John Crowder, 17, played forward for Our Lady of Mount Carmel High School in Essex and was preparing for a July tour with the Nike Baltimore Elite AAU team and being eyed by some college programs, coaches said.

He was found laying in the grass and bleeding from gunshot wounds at the 2600 block of Garrett Ave. near Coldstream Homestead Montebello around 1 a.m., said Agent Donny Moses, a police spokesman. Crowder died a few hours later at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Crowder, 6-foot-8 and 215 pounds, told The Sun in April that he’d received letters from a host of schools in the Atlantic 10 basketball conference league and the Atlantic Coast Conference. He listed University of Maryland, Virginia Tech, Clemson University and St. Joseph’s University.

“He was highly regarded around the country,” said Roland Vent, a AAU coach.

Crowder played as a freshman for Towson Catholic, but transferred to Mount Carmel when the Archdiocese of Baltimore closed it last summer.

Vent said Crowder hoped to find a different school for his junior year and that his family was eager for him to leave the city. “There is nothing here for a kid with talent,” said Vent. “You need to get them away from here so stuff like this doesn’t happen.”

In a separate shooting, police were called to the scene of a triple shooting at the 300 block of Forrest Street in Southwest Baltimore. All three were juveniles and all three survived, police said. The three were on the front porch when a man fired from the corner of Orleans and Forrest streets, said Agent Donny Moses, a police spokesman. One was hit in the chest, another in the cheek and the third in the arm.

District detectives were also investigating a non-fatal shooting in West Baltimore after a 32-year old victim was driven to St. Agnes Hospital from a gas station at North Forest Park Road and Windsor Mill Road.

annie.linskey@baltsun.com

Sign up for Baltimore Sun local news text alerts