Nearly two decades have passed since the night of the murder, and Carleana Kirby has now lived as long as her victim did – about 35 years. She had her first parole hearing Tuesday morning at the Maryland Correctional Institution in Jessup, but the opportunity to plead for early release from a 50-year sentence came only after everyone assembled in the conference room heard and felt the pain and anger of the victim’s daughter.

The pain and anger caused by a senseless homicide — lost in memory to all but the surviving relatives and friends in the horrific pileup of homicides in the city of Baltimore since 1998 — was right there, right in front of us.

Crystal Ambrose, daughter of the late Theresa Ambrose, was, like Kirby, a teenager at the time of the murder. Now she was the first to speak at Kirby’s hearing. Sharon Begosh, one of two parole commissioners conducting the proceedings, gave her eight minutes for the victim impact statement, and Ambrose used every bit of it — a sobbing, trembling, anguished and bitter narrative of her life since the night of Feb. 11, 1998.