O Donnell Heights

The team picked to redevelop the 62-acre O'Donnell Heights public housing project in Southeast Baltimore has started construction after closing on $20 million in funding for the rental homes in phase one. The Michaels Development Co. and AHC Greater Baltimore, the master developers, said Thursday that Bozzuto Construction Co. will build 76 townhomes with funding secured in January. The largest piece was raised by selling federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. Eventually, the approximately 300 units of low-rise public housing on site will be torn down, but that is still years out. Earlier phases of the redevelopment project will rise on vacant land.

The team picked to redevelop the 62-acre O'Donnell Heights public housing project in Southeast Baltimore has started construction after closing on $20 million in funding for the rental homes in phase one. The Michaels Development Co. and AHC Greater Baltimore, the master developers, said Thursday that Bozzuto Construction Co. will build 76 townhomes with funding secured in January. The largest piece was raised by selling federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. Eventually, the approximately 300 units of low-rise public housing on site will be torn down, but that is still years out. Earlier phases of the redevelopment project will rise on vacant land.

A man in his twenties was shot in the foot in Southeast Baltimore on Sunday afternoon, according to Baltimore Police. Officers responded to the 6200 block of Toone Street in the city's O'Donnell Heights neighborhood about 12:40 p.m. for a report of a shooting and located the wounded man, police said. The man was transported to an area hospital, police said. Southeastern District detectives are investigating the shooting. No further information was immediately available.

A man in his twenties was shot in the foot in Southeast Baltimore on Sunday afternoon, according to Baltimore Police. Officers responded to the 6200 block of Toone Street in the city's O'Donnell Heights neighborhood about 12:40 p.m. for a report of a shooting and located the wounded man, police said. The man was transported to an area hospital, police said. Southeastern District detectives are investigating the shooting. No further information was immediately available.

Authorities raided several locations in O'Donnell Heights in Southeast Baltimore yesterday and arrested 12 people charged in warrants with selling cocaine and heroin.Six other suspects were being sought last night, said police Sgt. Richard Smith, who heads the Southeastern District drug enforcement unit.Smith said that beginning at 3 p.m., city and housing authority police led raids on dwellings in the 1200 block of Gusryan St., the 1200 block of Wohler Way and the 6300 block of Boston St., seized quantities of suspected cocaine and heroin, a large quantity of drug-packaging material and a handgun.

Baltimore fire officials blamed careless smoking for a blaze in O'Donnell Heights that resulted in the death of a 5-year-old boy yesterday and injuries to three other people, including the boy's mother.Twenty minutes after the blaze was reported, Peter Christoforakis' body was found in a second-floor bedroom in the 1300 block of Bunson Way, said Capt. Calvin Johnson, a Fire Department spokesman.The child's mother, Patricia McCauley, 24, was reported in fair and stable condition last night at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where she was taken for treatment of severe smoke inhalation, a spokeswoman said.

Almost 1,000 public housing units stand old and decrepit on Baltimore's southeastern edge, overrun with rival drug gangs and bordered by five cemeteries. O'Donnell Heights is so violent that pizza deliverers and newspaper carriers dare not enter. Taxicabs won't get closer than the perimeter at night. In O'Donnell Heights, like other city public housing complexes, residents are losing hope that their streets will ever be livable, let alone safe. "We're the forgotten part of the inner city," said Michelle Holmes, vice president of the O'Donnell Heights Tenant Council, representing an estimated 750 families.

Ella Broadway remembers being carefree, hanging her laundry to dry on the line out back. Then she knew all her neighbors in O'Donnell Heights, the sprawling public housing complex in far Southeast Baltimore, where she has lived since 1985. "When all these houses were full, it was a really wonderful community," Broadway said yesterday, standing steps from rows of apartments set to be demolished in a major overhaul of the crime-ridden area, where two people were fatally shot in separate incidents last month.

Jamaican drug dealers from New York City are being sought for killing a 24-year-old O'Donnell Heights woman and wounding her 4-year-old son and three other people, police said.Police said Jamaican drug dealers -- perhaps the same group -- also are responsible for killing a 29-year-old woman and her 2-year-old child Jan. 7 in their Northeast Baltimore apartment."They [detectives] are taking a strong, strong look at a possible connection between both shootings," said Dennis S. Hill, a police spokesman.

Almost 1,000 public housing units stand old and decrepit on Baltimore's southeastern edge, overrun with rival drug gangs and bordered by five cemeteries. O'Donnell Heights is so violent that pizza deliverers and newspaper carriers dare not enter. Taxicabs won't get closer than the perimeter at night. In O'Donnell Heights, like other city public housing complexes, residents are losing hope that their streets will ever be livable, let alone safe. "We're the forgotten part of the inner city," said Michelle Holmes, vice president of O'Donnell Heights Tenant Council, representing an estimated 750 families.

Baltimore officials awarded the rights to run four city recreation centers to three nonprofit groups Wednesday despite fiery opposition from City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young. The vote by the city's spending board marked the first step in an administration plan to focus public spending on other centers. "In the end, it's the right thing to do for the children of Baltimore," said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who has proposed ceding control of as many as 25 rec centers to private groups.

And so school is out and summer begins, and still most of the public swimming pools in the city of Baltimore are not open. Because of the government's money problems - and because, I suspect, so much private money is tied up this year in a crowded mayoral campaign and the Labor Day Grand Prix - we have swimming pools opening on a staggered schedule, with some not available to children in the poorest neighborhoods until July 9. Can't we do...

THE PROBLEM : The grate over a Southeast Baltimore storm inlet was broken and ajar. THE BACKSTORY : Joseph Thomas called Watchdog twice last month with his problem: A sewer plate remained ajar at the No. 20 bus stop on Boston Street at Gusryan Street in his O'Donnell Heights neighborhood. Because of the plate, "the bus could never pull right to the curb," he said. "He was always 5, 6 feet beyond that." Thomas noticed the plate six months ago and called Watchdog for help. "If they had two strong men, they could just pick it up and put it straight," he said.

The intended target, prosecutors say, was Lee Dotson, a member of an O'Donnell Heights gang engaged in a vicious, weeks-long turf war. But the bullet hit his 16-year-old girlfriend, Estefany Gonzalez. Dotson, the only eyewitness to the crime, refused to name her killer. Yesterday Juan Hernandez, the man prosecutors believe killed the former Patterson High School student, entered an Alford plea - an acknowledgment that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict but not an admission of guilt - to second-degree murder and handgun charges.

EPA report faults agency's bay efforts The Environmental Protection Agency needs to do more not only to clean up the Chesapeake Bay but also to let the public know where it is falling short on the effort, according to a report released yesterday. The report, by the EPA's Office of Inspector General, said the federal agency needs to work with local governments in the bay's six-state watershed to make sure their land-use practices are helping to protect the bay. It calls on the EPA to outline for Congress how much money it is spending on cleanup actions and how much progress it is making.

THE COUNT Homicides since Jan. 1: 252 THE VICTIM A 17-year-old was fatally shot yesterday in O'Donnell Heights. LAST YEAR: Baltimore had recorded 231 homicides as of Nov. 2, 2006.

More than 100 police officers swept through the troubled O'Donnell Heights public housing complex last night, seeking 30 people linked to drug gangs believed to be responsible for a recent spate of shootings.Heavily armed officers raided eight suspected drug houses in the Southeast Baltimore development of 900 rowhouses.The raids started about 8 p.m., and in minutes police had arrested four people and seized substantial amounts of suspected cocaine and heroin at two houses and were searching other residences late last night.

Ella Broadway remembers being carefree, hanging her laundry to dry on the line out back. Then she knew all her neighbors in O'Donnell Heights, the sprawling public housing complex in far Southeast Baltimore, where she has lived since 1985. "When all these houses were full, it was a really wonderful community," Broadway said yesterday, standing steps from rows of apartments set to be demolished in a major overhaul of the crime-ridden area, where two people were fatally shot in separate incidents last month.

Abandoned as an infant, moved from home to home and state to state, Estefany Gonzalez came to Maryland last fall for a fresh start. The 16-year-old had plenty of friends at Patterson High School, but never felt comfortable living on Eastern Avenue with the man who had helped raise her, the man she called her father. Struggling with schoolwork and skipping classes, she was kicked out of school in October, relatives said. She was out late Friday night, walking through a nearly deserted public housing project in O'Donnell Heights on the far eastern edge of the city, visiting friends and clutching a bag of McDonald's fast food.