Baltimore high school quarterback gunned down just days before graduation

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – A school year filled with violence involving high school athletes across the nation claimed another life this week as K’Mauri Ebanks, a senior quarterback for Baltimore’s Digital Harbor High School, was gunned down in a hail of bullets, Sunday, just days before he was set to graduate from high school.

Ebanks, 19, was carrying gifts from a baby shower held earlier on Sunday for him and his pregnant girlfriend when he was shot at least 35 times. He was rushed to Maryland’s Shock Trauma Center and pronounced dead after numerous attempts to resuscitate him.

“As a football player, he was always eligible to play. He was a good student [of the game] when it came to memorization, which helped him play the quarterback position,” Digital Harbor coach Herbert Parham told The Baltimore Banner.

Parham, who also serves as a counselor at Digital Harbor, noted that Ebanks' academic performance began to fall off after football season, which was a cause for concern.

“I’m not sure what he was getting into, but his attendance started to fall off,” Parham added for the Banner. “His mother and grandmother were always present, so he had the support. I can’t really say what changed, but him passing is unfortunate.”

Ebanks puts an unwanted bookend on the 2022-23 school year in Baltimore. In early December, during the first week of school, Mervo High’s Jeremiah Brogden, a first-year running back for the Mustangs, was gunned down on campus just hours before the team’s opening night game was scheduled to take place. One week later, 14-year-old Travis Slaughter, who was not a football player, was shot and killed one block from Milford Mill Academy immediately following a football game at the Baltimore County school.

Just last week Baltimore City school officials held their sixth annual Peace and Remembrance Day to honor 19 Baltimore City students who were killed during the current school year. Ebanks expands that list to 20. According to statistics being tracked by The Baltimore Banner, there have been 84 shooting victims in Baltimore this year who are 17 years old or younger, with 62 of them falling between the ages of 13 and 18.