Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake rarely speaks of the night the city's dangers arrived at her front door. But in the days after the stabbing death of a young Johns Hopkins researcher in Charles Village, she has been thinking about the moment that she says helped shape the way she views violent crime.

"There is no acceptable amount of death. There is no acceptable level of violence," Rawlings-Blake tells Baltimore Sun colleague Julie Scharper. "This is more than a public safety issue. This is a moral issue. All the communities affected by violence need to be as outraged and as determined to pursue justice."

Rawlings-Blake told Scharper she was in her bedroom in her Coldsping condominium that chilly November night in 2002 when the front door banged open and she heard her brother scream: "Call the police!"

Rawlings-Blake hurried to the landing of her split-level home that chilly November evening eight years ago. She found her younger brother hunched in the entryway, blood streaming from his neck and back.

"I didn't know what happened," Rawlings-Blake said. "I didn't know the circumstances. I picked up the phone and I yanked it so hard I pulled the cord out of the wall."

Rawlings-Blake, who was vice president of the City Council at the time, said it furthered her resolve to push for stricter penalties for violent criminals.

"We have to be vigilant to make sure that people who should not be walking among us are off the street," she said.