UPDATE: Duane "Shorty" Davis has found his grill!!!!: https://www.facebook.com/shortman9/videos/10210762929288591/
Well this is very upsetting and yet another reason why I'm losing faith in humans. A man who is well known for traveling around Baltimore City feeding the homeless had his $5,000 grill stolen: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-ci-shorty-grill-stolen-20171006-story.html
Well this is very upsetting and yet another reason why I'm losing faith in humans. A man who is well known for traveling around Baltimore City feeding the homeless had his $5,000 grill stolen: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-ci-shorty-grill-stolen-20171006-story.html
Duane ”Shorty" Davis, 57, is shown with his barbecue grill, which he pulls around town to provide food for city residents at events and gatherings. The grill was stolen this week.
October 6, 2017
Now, Duane ”Shorty" Davis, 57, is calling for help.
A couple of thieves — grown men, he says — dragged off his hulking $5,000 grill, the one with three chambers and two smokers that he hauled up from Antioch, Ga., more than a year ago. The thieves hitched it to the back of a gold-colored pickup and drove off Tuesday afternoon from behind Mary E. Rodman Elementary School in the Allendale neighborhood of West Baltimore, he says.
For three days, Shorty's grill, as it's simply and widely known, has been missing.
”Every time I see somebody, I spread the word. In West Baltimore, East Baltimore — we're going to find it. The only way we're not going to find it is if they went out of Baltimore," said Shelley Stephens, who runs Shelley's Helping Hands, the nonprofit that offered books and barbecue last Saturday.
But what becomes of barbecue activism without the barbecue? A pitmaster without his pit?
”I can't do the work ... like a cabdriver without a car," said Davis, of Randallstown. ”I'm a 57-year-old ex-felon. Who's going to hire me? All I got is my grill."
With his grill, Davis opened a business apart from his neighborhood activism. He works catering jobs and runs a roadside stand, Shorty's Bootleg BBQ. It's all a second chance through barbecue.
So he's fed Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, as well as former Govs. Martin O'Malley and Robert Ehrlich, he says. During the general election last year, he offered free hot dogs and hamburgers outside a Park Heights polling place to Democrats and Republicans alike. But it's the volunteer work, the Sundays he parks near a downtown shelter and feeds the homeless, that earned Davis recognition from the City Council.
”This grill fights crime, ends homelessness, employs returning citizens & gives people hope. Folks in Baltimore — Let's find it!" urged Todd Oppenheim, a city public defender, in a message online.
The grill was stolen after last Saturday's Books and Barbecue event by Shelley's Helping Hands. Davis fed the crowd with hamburgers and hot dogs. Then he left his grill behind with Stephens. There it remained at the Mary E. Rodman Recreation Center for three days before Stephens returned and discovered it missing.
Security cameras across the street captured the crime and the pickup truck and the thieves' getaway, Stephens said.
”I knew better than to leave it, but that's my community. I was like, ‘Ain't nobody going to take it,'" he said. ”How could somebody take away from the givers?"
Davis was traveling out of town when he received the phone call.
”I was sick. I was mad. I was upset," he said. ”Who would do something like that? If you need my grill, all you had to do was ask."