Belair

IT'S ALWAYS a jolt when I miss something that stood in a place for a lifetime. So it was, the other day, while heading off to lunch, that the Belair Market disappeared. It was gone. Where the block-long market building stood is now a freshly tilled vacant lot. When I say stood, I mean for centuries. There was a market in Oldtown, on Gay Street, for ages. Newspaper articles say the market was founded in 1813. My mother's family, who settled in Baltimore in 1760, acted as if the Belair Market was a venerable institution when they arrived.

A man was shot in the arm Saturday evening in Northeast Baltimore, police say. Officers found the victim suffering from at least one gunshot wound in the 4900 block of Belair Road about 6:50 p.m., police said. He was taken to a local hospital for treatment. Police released no other information. alisonk@baltsun.com twitter.com/aliknez

Northeastern District police responding to a 911 call reporting a man shot in the 3100 block of Belair Road near Clifton Park Terrace about 3:30 p.m. yesterday found the victim lying dead between two parked cars, said Agent Donny Moses, a Police Department spokesman. The man was shot at least once in the head and was pronounced dead at the scene by Fire Department medics, Moses said. Moses said the man's name was withheld pending notification of family members. The scene of the daylight shooting was a busy section of the Belair-Edison neighborhood at the eastern edge of Clifton Park, police said.

A medic unit that had rushed to the scene of the midday shooting in Belair-Edison sat idling in the street. With the dead man's body under a sheet, there was no one to transport. Word was spreading about 49-year-old Kelvin Moyd's being shot. Relatives came running down Pelham Avenue, visibly upset and too frantic to cry. Two women burst through crime scene tape. One was bear-hugged by a male officer, who had other officers come to his aid as he struggled to keep her back. Then a man came down the street and a group of people swarmed him before he could confront an officer.

Bishop C. Helfenbein, who ran a butcher stall in the Belair Market for 58 years and was longtime president of the stall merchants association, died yesterday at Brook Grove Nursing Home in Olney after a long illness.He was 83.One of the old breed of German butchers in the city markets, Mr. Helfenbein was a sarcastic yet effective advocate for the Belair Market stall operators for many years until his retirement in 1983.He was instrumental in convincing City Hall to rebuild the citymarkets in the 1970s, proclaiming the modern, festive-lookingstructures the precursors of Harborplace.

On Nov. 19, 1884, a large crowd of Democrats gathered for the "Barbecue at Belair," celebrating the presidential election of Grover Cleveland. The barbecue was threatened by persistent rains, but 400 to 500 people came to the fairgrounds. Everyone was well fed, and "many of them after polishing the bones carried them home as souvenirs of the first democratic barbecue. ... After the feasting was over the crowd was called to order in the main exhibition hall and addressed by Misters Thomas C. Weeks, Herman Stump and J.T.C.

In Belair-Edison, the rowhouses are neat and affordable, the ++ parks and alleys clean, the block watch captains always on duty and the slumlords held at bay.Here is a neighborhood where natives pronounce Belair "Blair," a place so quintessentially Baltimore that filmmaker Barry Levinson shot scenes for "Avalon" and "Tin Men" on streets known for red brick rowhouses lined with handsome porches.But even here, in the tidy Northeast Baltimore neighborhood of 14,000 people -- named one of Maryland's best by a state commission last year -- people are fleeing for the suburbs.

A community leader and a church pastor in a tiny section of Northeast Baltimore's Belair-Edison known as the "Four by Four" are convinced they know who is responsible for crime on their streets. John T. Shannon Jr. wants to make it clear: The East Baltimore residents displaced by the sweeping redevelopment around Johns Hopkins Hospital are, by and large, good, hardworking people and fine neighbors. He's the president of East Baltimore Development Inc., the nonprofit organization in charge of transforming acre upon acre of crumbling rowhouses north of Hopkins into a biotech park, and he took exception to my recent column about complaints from residents of Belair-Edison about the number of east-siders who moved there.

Anthony Dawson has a list. It is handwritten and scrawled on a notebook-size piece of paper, and it records his efforts to eradicate drug-dealing and crime from a small part of lower Belair-Edison in Northeast Baltimore. In February, he wrote, "Created good neighbor walks." On July 11, Dawson noted a community cookout at which he talked to city police about drug dealing at St. Cloud and Lyndale avenues, in an area known as the "4X4" off Belair Road across from the Lake Clifton school complex.

Spring in Belair-Edison is synonymous with azaleas.The flowers bud throughout the square mile that constitutes this Northeast Baltimore neighborhood, their vibrant pink clashing with the more sedate red brick used to build most of the homes.From the neighborhood's major intersection, where Belair Road and Erdman Avenue meet, rowhouses march outward until they bump into Herring Run Park to the north and east, Clifton Park Golf Course to the west and Sinclair Lane to the south.A sprinkling of single-family homes and duplexes -- about 1.5 percent of the neighborhood's 6,900 homes -- sit in a clump by themselves.

One of two 13-year-old girls reported missing in Baltimore on Saturday night has returned home, city police said Sunday evening, but the other girl still has not been found. Kymira Martin made contact with her mother Sunday and returned home later that day, according to police. She was reported missing from her home in Waverly after leaving Friday evening. Still missing is Kaitlyn Benny. Described as white, 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighing 130 pounds, she was last seen about 5:30 p.m. Friday in the 5900 block of Benton Heights Ave. in the Glenham-Belford area off Belair Road.

Traffic Morning commute snarled by accidents, including two with injury Several accidents, including a fatal crash in Baltimore County, hampered Thursday morning's traffic, according to the state Department of Transportation. The morning commute became snarled at 5:41 a.m., due to a deadly accident involving three vehicles that closed all lanes and both shoulders of the Interstate 695 inner loop near Belair Road in the Overlea area of Baltimore County, DOT said. One adult was killed in the accident, and at least one adult and one child were injured and transported to area hospitals in critical condition, a Baltimore County Fire Department dispatcher confirmed.

As of 9 a.m. Tuesday, traffic was slow on Belair Road near Putty Hill Road, due to an accident. Accidents were slowing traffic on Ebenezer Road near Perryvale Road in Baltimore County, Route 7 near Ridge Road in Rosedale, and Route 482 near Brodbeck Road in Hampstead. Monument Street is closed between Wolfe Street and Patterson Park Avenue in East Baltimore, due to sinkhole repairs. Maryland Transit Administration bus 35 has been diverted. Until further notice, the No. 14 bus stop located northbound on Crain Highway at Furnace Branch Road has been temporarily relocated due to construction.

Around sunset Thursday, the big man — taller, broader, bolder and more passionate than anyone around him — called out from the middle of the crowd at the edge of Herring Run Park, and in that moment he stole the show from the politicians who had turned out for a "solidarity walk" through Belair-Edison. "We cannot zip our lips, pull down our blinds and close our doors," the big man said, his double-barrel voice booming over the traffic behind him on Belair Road. "Crime will come to you if you keep your lips zipped, your doors closed and your blinds pulled.

A fast-food restaurant in Northeast Baltimore was robbed Saturday night by two men who forced customers to lie on the floor while they took an undetermined amount of cash from registers, police said. The men entered the KFC restaurant in the 6200 block of Belair Road shortly before 7:10 p.m. One of them brandished a handgun and ordered customers to the floor as his companion acted as lookout, police said. The gunman then jumped over the counter and took money from the cash registers before both men fled through the restaurant's rear parking lot and went south on Marluth Avenue, police said.

A 39-year-old man was wounded after a gunman opened fire in a Northeast Baltimore barbershop early Friday, police said. Officers responding to a report of a shooting in the 4300 block of Belair Rd. around 12:30 a.m. found the victim in a rear bathroom suffering from a gunshot wound to his left leg, a police spokesman said. Witnesses told police that a man in a grey hooded sweatshirt ran inside the Cutz 4 Kingz Barbershop and fired at least once. It was unclear if the victim was an employee or a customer — a man who answered the phone at the barbershop hung up on a reporter — but police said he was expected to survive his injuries.

When David Sann searched for his first home two years ago, his instinct was to hunt in Baltimore County.After all, he'd been raised in Towson. But instead, he scouted out a Baltimore neighborhood where his payments are just $433 a month -- less than half what a White Marsh home of similar size would have cost."

Belair Market merchants implored the Baltimore City Planning Commission yesterday to quash a proposal that would tear down part of one of the nation's oldest markets to make way for a large grocery store that merchants say will put them out of business.But after nearly five hours of hearing opposition from the Belair Market merchants and support from other business owners in the Oldtown Mall and area residents, the commission approved the proposal, saying it would breathe new life into a decaying area of East Baltimore.

As of 9 a.m. Monday, traffic was slow on the outer loop of I-695 near Belair Road, due to an accident. Accidents were blocking traffic on I-95 southbound near the Harbor Tunnel in Baltimore City, on I-83 near 28th Street in Baltimore City and on Route 152 near Trimble Road in Harford County. A disabled vehicle was slowing traffic on I-95 northbound near the Fort McHenry Tunnel. There were no major delays reported on Baltimore area transit systems.

A 33-year-old man sitting in the back of a bar packed with up to 80 patrons on Belair Road was shot several times in the head and body early Wednesday, one of seven people killed in the city in the past five days. Baltimore police said a gunman walked into La'Son's Bar and Grill a few minutes before 1 a.m., pushed his way to the back and opened fire on Derrick Deon Smith, who was sitting in a secluded area behind the bar. Smith, of the 3500 block of chesterfield Ave., was rushed to Johns Hopkins Hospital where he was pronounced dead early Wednesday.