Carrollton Ridge

A man was shot in the legs Tuesday evening in the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood in Southwest Baltimore. Officers responded at 5:42 p.m. to the report of a man lying in an alley in the 2200 block of Christian St. and found a 22-year-old male suffering from gunshot wounds to the left leg and right knee, police said. The victim was taken to an area hospital. Officers have made no arrests and are continuing to investigate the shooting, police said. Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Baltimore police.

Natural gas and water service have been restored to most of the approximately 1,000 southwest Baltimore households that lost them as a result of pipe breaks Tuesday, city officials say. As of Sunday afternoon, about 25 households were still waiting for plumbers to make minor repairs and relight furnaces, stoves and water heaters, according to Kurt Kocher, a spokesman for Baltimore's public works department. Water service was restored to the area by late Tuesday, he said. Kocher said the house-by-house repair work was running ahead of schedule.

Charlene Love moved to a Formstone rowhouse in the 2000 block of McHenry St. two years ago, heartened by reports that this Southwest Baltimore neighborhood was growing safer. By late last year, she regretted it.Drug dealers used the alley next to her house to hide their stashes of drugs and money. And late Monday, her husband was robbed at gunpoint outside their house. A half-hour later, a 19-year-old neighbor was shot to death in the alley, and Love began packing up her things. Her family, including three children, ages 7, 8 and 10, plans to move out this morning.

A man was shot in the legs Tuesday evening in the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood in Southwest Baltimore. Officers responded at 5:42 p.m. to the report of a man lying in an alley in the 2200 block of Christian St. and found a 22-year-old male suffering from gunshot wounds to the left leg and right knee, police said. The victim was taken to an area hospital. Officers have made no arrests and are continuing to investigate the shooting, police said. Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Baltimore police.

Residents of an area of southwest Baltimore have moved into position to claim a small victory in the war on drugs with the planned conversion of an empty lot into a playground.The residents staged the Carrollton Ridge Community Festival yesterday, a children's fair that Mike Keeney, the neighborhood association president, said was the first step in recapturing the neighborhood.Proceeds from the fair will help build a playground in an empty lot that had been used as a dumping ground for garbage and drug paraphernalia.

A teen-ager was killed and two young men were wounded early yesterday outside a bar in Southwest Baltimore -- the latest outbreak of violence in a neighborhood targeted by police as a "hot spot" for crime.The incident in Carrollton Ridge marked the fifth slaying this year in a 35-square block area where state and federal funds are paying for extra police patrols to minimize homicides and shootings."We managed to curtail a lot of problems over there in the past six or seven weeks," said Maj. John L. Bergbower, the Southwestern District police commander.

They stopped counting at 100 -- 100 drug needles picked up off the playground.That was last year, when residents of southwest Baltimore cleaned up a neglected playground in Carrollton Ridge and put on a festival for children.This year, needles again litter the lot as residents prepare for their second children's festival Sunday.Michael Keeney, president of the Carrollton Ridge Community Association, and other organizers of the festival say the community must provide positive activities for children because the lure of destructive influences is so great.

Police arrested nine people yesterday and broke up a suspected drug organization that they said was responsible for selling cocaine and heroin in several communities in Southwest Baltimore.Detectives with the Youth Violence Task Force were searching last night for 11 other suspects who were indicted by a state grand jury last week. Bail for the 11, the youngest of whom is 16, has been set at up to $1 million."They were all drug distributors in the area," said Lt. Jon Foster, a supervisor with the task force, which was set up last year to target offenders 24 and under.

GIVE THE police force and the police commissioner credit for Baltimore's dramatic decrease in crime so far this year. But also applaud the people of this city who have forged a new commitment to work with law enforcement and other agencies to rid their neighborhoods of both criminals and the environments that produce crime.Violent crime is down nearly 20 percent for the first three months of 1997, and property crime is 14 percent lower. Those numbers are significant. Part of the credit for the decline must go to neighborhood watch groups that make drug dealers know they are unwelcome, volunteers who run after-school programs that keep children out of trouble and citizens who clean up their blocks, get to know each other and send a message to criminals that people aren't going to stand idly by while crooks make their neighbors victims.

Steps from a weathered bench proclaiming Baltimore the "Greatest City in America," a pool of blood marked the spot where a 16-year-old boy was fatally shot early Wednesday. Officers said Bruce Benn was shot in the head at about 1 a.m. while standing in the 1900 block of W. Lombard St., and taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was pronounced dead at about 3 a.m. Police did not provide additional details or indicate whether they knew of a motive or suspects. On Wednesday morning, people milling about the trash-strewn Carrollton Ridge neighborhood where the shooting occurred said they didn't know anything about what happened, while a police officer stood on a street corner as two detectives assigned to the case canvassed the area.

Steps from a weathered bench proclaiming Baltimore the "Greatest City in America," a pool of blood marked the spot where a 16-year-old boy was fatally shot early Wednesday. Officers said Bruce Benn was shot in the head at about 1 a.m. while standing in the 1900 block of W. Lombard St., and taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was pronounced dead at about 3 a.m. Police did not provide additional details or indicate whether they knew of a motive or suspects. On Wednesday morning, people milling about the trash-strewn Carrollton Ridge neighborhood where the shooting occurred said they didn't know anything about what happened, while a police officer stood on a street corner as two detectives assigned to the case canvassed the area.

City police were investigating the Monday afternoon killing of a 31-year-old man in Southwest Baltimore. Officers were called to the 500 block of S. Fulton Ave., in the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood, at about 3:25 p.m. and found the unidentified man suffering from gunshot wounds to the head and stomach, police said. He was transported to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where he was pronounced dead. Police did not have a suspect or know of a motive and could not immediately identify the victim.

Baltimore Police are investigating the shooting of a man in the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood early Monday morning. According to preliminary information, the incident was reported at 1:40 a.m., police said. An adult man was shot several times in the 2000 block of Eagle Street, in the southern district, according to police. No further information was available. Text BUSINESS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun Business text alerts

Harold Harvard thought things had improved in his Southwest Baltimore neighborhood since a stray bullet wounded a 5-year-old girl last summer. But after three fatal shootings Sunday just steps from his home — part of a barrage of bullets that left eight dead and three injured across the city over the holiday weekend — he's declared that serenity short-lived. "I'm scared," the 43-year-old said bluntly on Monday, standing outside his Ramsay Street home where a police cruiser had been idling all morning and a few American flags hung limply in the heat.

Back-to-back snowstorms shut down the region for days last month, but people still managed to buy and sell more homes. The number of homes changing hands in the Baltimore metro area increased almost 10 percent from a year earlier, on par with the previous two months, Metropolitan Regional Information Systems said Wednesday. Pending deals appeared to be more affected: The 7 percent uptick in contracts signed in February was the smallest year-over-year increase in months. And values continued to drop.

Connie Fowler's Southwest Baltimore neighborhood was teeming with police and other officials keeping an eye on everyone's comings and goings, and she didn't mind a bit. On a recent afternoon, Fowler, the president of the Carrollton Ridge Community Association, led a gaggle of city workers on a tour of her street, coming to a stop in an alley where she pointed out bricks bulging from the side of an abandoned building that seemed on the brink of collapse....

CATONSVILLE -- Overzealous campaign workers who put a large "Eileen Rehrmann for Governor" sign on private property along Baltimore National Pike just west of Interstate 695 last week earned the Harford County executive a $200 citation from county inspectors.But Arnold Jablon, the county director of Permits and Resource Management, said the Rehrmann campaign agreed to take the sign down, in lieu of paying the fine. Campaign signs are illegal until 30 or fewer days before the election, which is in September.

Shenea Counts, suffering through another humid night in Baltimore, grabbed a quarter, stepped onto South Bentalou Street and walked to Rosie's corner bar, where a sign in the window advertises: "Cup of ice: 25."The 13-year-old, slurping on the fast-melting cubes, walked back toward her small rowhouse across the street. She was shot just steps from her front door -- struck in the chest by a stray bullet fired during what police said was a drug dispute at the corner.Shenea ran inside and collapsed.

Two dozen people showed up for Wednesday evening's Citizens on Patrol walk through Southwest Baltimore's Carrollton Ridge neighborhood - six weeks after a stray bullet hit a 5-year-old girl there. It seemed like a good turnout, until one scanned the faces. One person was from Violetville, another from Union Square. A community leader from South Baltimore came, as did two representatives from the mayor's office, two Guardian Angels, six police officers, the commander of the Southwestern police district, the police commissioner, two from his media office, two television cameramen and two television reporters.

The sad part is, there is nothing unusual about this story. A little girl is hit in the head on a Southwest Baltimore street by a bullet meant for someone else. A teenager with a lengthy criminal record is arrested and charged as an adult with attempted murder. As Raven Wyatt's anguished family huddles over her hospital bed, hoping that the 5-year-old recovers, an outraged community demands to know how the 17-year-old suspect, Lamont Davis, seems to have slithered through the juvenile system relatively unscathed for years.