Family remembers motorcyclist killed by 12-year-old driving stolen car in Baltimore
Friends and loved ones packed Morning Star Baptist Church in Woodlawn Tuesday morning to pay tribute to Barry Wright Sr., a 69-year-old motorcyclist struck and killed by a 12-year-old boy driving a stolen car in West Baltimore late last month.
Wright's funeral comes as police apprehended another 12-year-old behind the wheel of a stolen car that crashed in the same neighborhood near Coppin State University over the weekend.
Stolen on Sunday
It was around 2 a.m. Sunday when police said a 12-year-old boy stole a Hyundai Sonata from the 1200 block of North Gay Street in East Baltimore.
The owner of the car declined an interview, but his girlfriend said he was able to track the Hyundai online and showed pictures of severe damage to the front end when it crashed into a home more than four miles away in the 2800-block of West North Avenue.
Baltimore police said the juvenile had prior contact with law enforcement, and they released him to a parent and made what is called a Child In Need of Supervision referral to the Department of Juvenile Services or DJS.
Fatal impact
Just three weeks earlier, in almost the same area of North Avenue, another 12-year-old boy driving a stolen Kia slammed into a motorcycle.
Police said the impact killed 69-year-old Barry Wright Sr.
That 12-year-old was also a repeat offender.
Baltimore City State's Attorney Ivan Bates said he was under DJS supervision at the time but will never face criminal charges because of juvenile justice reform legislation passed in the General Assembly in 2022 that will not allow those under 13 to face certain charges.
At 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Wright's loved ones said their final goodbyes and remembered the beloved father, husband and grandfather at his funeral.
"From the bottom of my heart, we're going to miss Barry," one friend said at the service, which included a montage of Wright on the motorcycle he loved to ride.
The pastor spoke of Wright's dependability, how he was always there for his friends and family.
"May Barry's life speak for him," he told the crowd of mourners.
Just 12 days earlier, state's attorney Bates read a statement the family's behalf, outraged at the lack of charges under the law and the "cruel injustice of this system."
Wright's son said in that statement, "Annapolis seems to glance at the tragedy, shrugging its shoulders as if life didn't matter at all so long as the perpetrator is under the age of 13. The boy who stole my father's life is a mere 12 years of age and is walking free."
The son's statement referred to "gut-wrenching injustice that [the 12-year-old] has more rights than his innocent victims."
Speaking to the state's attorney
Bates, who slammed the inability to get justice for the family, also addressed juvenile accountability in his new Beyond the Status Quo podcast with DJS Secretary Betsy Fox Tolentino.
"I think my role is to always make sure we're going to do things better, so we don't have these incidents, but when we do, they are incredibly heartbreaking. My heart goes out to the victims," the secretary said.
Fox Tolentino told Bates mandated confidentiality often makes it harder to show what is being done behind the scenes to rehabilitate troubled juveniles.
"That's something that could be really challenging for the community outside the system to understand because they want to know what's happening in the system," the DJS secretary said. "They want to know the system is working the way they think it should be, and when you can't see, it's hard to trust that it's working the way they want it to work."
You can watch more of their conversation here.
