This just in from overnight:

A 20-year-old man was hospitalized late Wednesday night after he was shot several times in the head, according to Baltimore Police. Officers responded to a call for a shooting in the rear of the 1900 block of N. Wolfe Street, police said. They found the victim lying on the ground with several gunshot wounds to the head and a graze wound on his lower back. The man was taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital for treatment, police said.

If this man dies, he could become Baltimore's 238th homicide victim of 2009. Number 237 fell Wednesday night:

A man was fatally shot Wednesday night in Northwest Baltimore, police said. No arrest had been made and the man's name was withheld pending notification of family. Responding to a report of a shooting in the 3800 block of Oakford Ave. about 9:10 p.m., a city Fire Department ambulance crew found the man lying outside a house and bleeding from gunshot wounds to the head, back and chest. He was taken to Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 9:55 p.m., police said.

Last year, the city recorded 234 murders, a 20-year low. We couldn't keep up with that pace, apparently, though New York and Washington, among other cities, recorded historic declines. A reader, Danielle Shapiro, takes us to task in today's letters section for writing about a decline in home assessments over the city's murder story.

We didn't choose one story over another, and yes the assessment story ran on the same day the New York Times put its murder story on the front page. The reader is correct that we need to connect the dots to seemingly disparate killings and we do so every year. My colleague Justin Fenton is writing a year-end murder story that I think will offer some new insight into city killings, examine some startling demographics of violence and look at some of the numbers between Baltimore and New York (such as gun seizures) that could help explain some of the differences.

In addition, reporters all year long have written in-depth stories about city crime, from the courtroom to the street corner. So stay-tuned!