Clifton Park

Baltimore Police have identified a 2-year-old girl who died after being ejected from a vehicle that hit a tree near the intersection of The Alameda and Harford Road by Clifton Park Wednesday night, according to fire officials. At about 6:30 p.m. paramedics responded to the single-vehicle crash in the 2700 block of The Alameda, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a fire spokesman. The girl was found unconscious and non-responsive, he said, and she was pronounced dead at an area hospital.

A young girl died after being ejected from a vehicle that hit a tree near the intersection of The Alameda and Harford Road by Clifton Park Wednesday night, said fire officials in a statement. At about 6:30 p.m. paramedics responded to the single-vehicle crash in the 2700 block of The Alameda, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a fire spokesman. The girl was found unconscious and non-responsive, he said, and she was pronounced dead at an area hospital. An adult and a second child were also injured and are being treated at an area hospital, Cartwright said.

Wayne Smith is standing at the Weber gas grill in Clifton Park brushing barbecue sauce over a batch of jerk chicken — a Caribbean signature dish in a weekend of cultural signatures at the 30th annual Caribbean Carnival Festival. He's at the edge of a circle of vendors, but the jerk cookery puts him at the center of the spirit of things on the first day of the two-day festival. It's about 2 p.m. in full sun with a temperature about 90 away from the grill, so who knows how hot it is right here where he's working in back of the Wat U Makin Jamaican stand, where they figured on selling about 100 pounds of chicken this weekend?

When Jim Bartlett last left the Mothers' Garden in Clifton Park on Friday evening, there were two short stone columns standing at the entrance from East 32nd Street, but no longer. By Saturday morning, when he arrived to prepare for a Mother's Day weekend celebration, one of the columns lay on its side, the apparent victim of an overnight car accident. The pile of fallen stone made as a good an illustration as any of why Bartlett was there at all, why he has devoted so much time in the past few months to creating an organization devoted exclusively to maintaining this enclave of stone paths, stone gazebo, arbor, footbridge, benches and landscaping that was established in 1926 to honor mothers.

If the gruff and grumpy William Donald Schaefer, buried last week, was tender-hearted about anything, it would have been his mother and flowers. The Baltimore mayor and the Maryland governor lived almost his entire life on Edgewood Street with his mother, where he grew up watching her care for her garden and for her African violets. He continued to live there after her death in 1983, rising early on Saturday mornings to weed the gardens she left behind, and he planted new roses in an effort to encourage his neighbors to fix up their gardens, too. In 1984, Mayor Schaefer, in his usual "do it now" fashion, rounded up the people he needed to refurbish the Mothers' Garden in a corner of Clifton Park, and on Mother's Day he dedicated it to the memory of Tululu Irene Schaefer and "all devoted mothers of Baltimore.

One man was killed and two others were hurt in two separate shootings in Northeast and Northwest Baltimore early Wednesday morning, police reported. Officers responded to reports of a shooting in the Belair-Edison neighborhood shortly before 2 a.m. Two men were found shot in the 3200 block of Belair Road, near Erdman Avenue and close to Clifton Park. One man, who was shot in the torso and neck, was transported to Johns Hopkins Hospital and pronounced dead at 2:15 a.m. The other man, 26, was shot in the finger, police say, and is being treated at an area hospital.

After more than a week of hacking away at underbrush and weedy trees, landscape workers have tamed nearly 30 years of neglect at one of Baltimore's oldest Roman Catholic cemeteries. The 7-acre St. Vincent DePaul Cemetery, which is surrounded by Clifton Park, has emerged from its first clean-up since it officially closed in the 1980s. Workers cleared away tall grasses, unruly trees and nearly 5 tons of debris around four sections of askew grave markers and upturned headstones.

Police are investigating a shooting near Clifton Park in North Baltimore on Friday night. An adult male was shot in the stomach at 10:21 p.m. at Clarence Avenue and Clifton Park Terrace in the Belair-Edison neighborhood, Baltimore City police said. Police did not release the man's identity, nor his condition Friday night, but a homicide unit was notified because of the seriousness of his injury. No additional details were available Friday night. jkanderson@baltsun.

Under a hillside of thistle and milkweed secluded within Northeast Baltimore's Clifton Park rests an unmarked neighborhood of the dead. Hidden from view and overtaken by nature, the mid-19th-century St. Vincent DePaul Church Cemetery is the burial ground for some 2,000 Baltimoreans. But only a few broken limestone markers remain. The descendants of the Irish, German and Italian families buried here, using Internet message boards, are joining forces to bring recognition to the graveyard troubled by criminal, financial and maintenance issues for the past 65 years.

A 25-year-old man who was shot Thursday night while walking on Belair Road in Northeast Baltimore died early Friday of gunshot wounds to the head and body, police said. The victim, whose identity was not immediately released, was pronounced dead at 12:15 a.m. at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Police said he had been shot twice shortly before 11:30 p.m. in the 3200 block of Belair Road, near Clifton Park abutting the community of Belair-Edison. Police said the man was walking with two other men when one took out a handgun and shot him. The two other men ran and police said they have made no arrests.