Rowhouse

A small rowhouse blaze sent a Baltimore woman to the hospital yesterday with second- and third-degree burns on her upper body, city fire officials said. The fire, in the 600 block of S. Decker Ave. in Canton, was reported about 4:20 p.m., said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a Fire Department spokesman. Firefighters rescued one victim, a woman believed to be about 50 years old, from the first floor of the home, Cartwright said. She was taken to the Johns Hopkins Burn Center, where she was treated for second- and third-degree burns above her waist.

A 29-year-old recruit with the city Fire Department died during a training exercise yesterday as she tried to extinguish a blaze set by instructors in a vacant rowhouse in Southwest Baltimore, according to fire officials. Racheal Wilson, mother of an 11-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter, was inside a three-story dwelling when she collapsed about noon and was taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center. She died shortly after she arrived, fire officials said. Details of her injuries were not released yesterday.

The day before a fire cadet died in a live-fire training exercise in a city rowhouse, another cadet and a fire lieutenant were injured in a similar controlled burn in East Baltimore, fire officials acknowledged yesterday. It took several days for the Fire Department to confirm the earlier exercise, and a spokesman declined to provide additional details. A recruit, Daniel Nott, suffered a first-degree burn on his cheek and a firefighter, Lt. Sam Darby, was burned on his hand, fire officials said.

A man believed to be in his 60s was found dead early yesterday in a burning Canton rowhouse, where the clutter of personal possessions and debris hampered rescue efforts by city firefighters. Witnesses told of heavy smoke pouring out of the corner rowhouse in the 3000 block of Elliott St., one block south of O'Donnell Square in Southeast Baltimore, about 2 a.m. The smoke was so thick that it set off smoke alarms in neighboring homes, residents said. Arriving firefighters could not get far inside the home because of the clutter.

Antonio Johnson turned back toward the burning rowhouse yesterday morning, but the flames were too big. He saw people hanging out windows, but most unforgettably, he heard their cries: Help me, help me. And later, someone told him that children who lived in the East Baltimore home didn't make it. "I hope it's not true," he said, voicing what almost anyone would have wished as Baltimore firefighters finished their grim work and reported their tragic findings....

THE COUNT Homicides since Jan. 1: 256 THE VICTIM A man shot about 5:30 p.m. inside a rowhouse in the 2600 block of Grogan Ave. in East Baltimore died last night at Johns Hopkins Hospital. LAST YEAR: Baltimore had recorded 237 homicides as of Nov. 11, 2006. ONLINE: Details and locations of this year's city homicides are at baltimoresun.com/homicidemap

THE COUNT Homicides since Jan. 1: 255 THE VICTIM A contractor renovating a rowhouse at Oswego and Park Heights avenues in Northwest Baltimore found a man fatally shot and another man critically wounded from gunfire. The incident was reported yesterday shortly before 10:30 a.m. LAST YEAR: Baltimore had recorded 234 homicides as of Nov. 8, 2006. ONLINE: Details and locations of this year's city homicides are at baltimoresun.com/homicidemap

When police officers burst into a West Baltimore Street rowhouse on a hot August afternoon, their target was a suspected drug dealer, and the raid yielded a stash of cocaine, heroin gel caps and marijuana. But they found much more: a loaded revolver as well as two pit bull terriers and the weights, chains, homemade harness and other equipment that are telltale signs of dogfighting. That volatile mix - drugs, guns and dogfighting - has fueled a deadly subculture that is tearing at some city neighborhoods, police, animal enforcement and health officials say. Pit bulls, or "pits" as they are commonly called, are prized by drug dealers and other criminals for their loyalty, muscular beauty and aggressive nature, a characteristic that can be manipulated to sadistic extremes.

The way the pins fall Seidel's Bowling Center, a Northeast Baltimore landmark since 1929, closed its doors, the victim of declining interest in bowling and duckpins. Hopkins aid officer quits A top financial aid officer at the Johns Hopkins University has resigned after an internal investigation concluded she violated conflict-of-interest policies. NAACP delays move to D.C. Leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People say they can not afford the estimated $20 million move to Washington.

For the cadets of Academy Class 19, the late Friday morning training exercise was a chance to escape their classrooms and battle a fire in a real building. They gathered at 145 S. Calverton Road, a run-down rowhouse long abandoned by its owner, boarded up and claimed by the city. Instructors ignited seven fires on wooden pallets scattered inside the home, in hallways, bedrooms and closets. Fire Apprentice Racheal M. Wilson, a 29-year-old mother of two who had begun training in November, grabbed a hose and led other cadets inside.

Sue Hart's Towson neighborhood consists of quaint brick rowhouses circa 1947 that appear from the street more cottagelike than the usual two-story Colonial. Narrow in width, these homes are lined up side by side, many behind picket or chain-link fences. Front yards, almost as deep as the homes themselves, showcase manicured lawns or are blanketed in controllable ivy. Almost all of the yards are shaded with old trees that were planted as saplings when home construction was completed more than a half-century ago. The concrete walkway to Hart's home passes ivy and small bushes.

Looking to offset rising electricity bills, Marsha Vitow has a modern solution: installing Baltimore's first residential wind turbine on the roof of her Federal Hill rowhouse. It's a logical move in a city whose mayor has pushed extra tree plantings, recycling and other issues on a "cleaner, greener" agenda, but Vitow has run into some old-fashioned problems. Decades-old zoning laws don't account for a wind turbine, and some of her neighbors say the eight-foot-tall contraption will hurt their rooftop views and their property values.

Woman is killed in collision with tow truck 3 A Lothian woman was killed when her Chevrolet Cavalier was rear-ended by a tow truck and landed in bushes off Bay Front Road in Lothian shortly before 2 p.m. Sunday, Anne Arundel County police said. Nancy Kelley Dowell, 48, of the 200 block of Main St. was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. Police said Dowell's car was eastbound and stopped to turn left into a driveway in the 800 block of Bay Front Road. Behind it, a Mercury Villager pulled onto the right shoulder and passed her car. A tow truck that had been behind the Villager did not swerve to avoid Dowell's car and struck it, police said.

Kids come with stuff. Ever wonder where families in the slim and slimmer rowhouses of Federal Hill put all that stuff? You can find out Saturday on the first-ever Tour of Kids' Spaces, a walking tour of eight to 10 homes in the historic neighborhood. Proceeds from the $25 tickets ($30 on Saturday) will benefit the Downtown Baltimore Family Alliance, a very young organization with an exploding membership of city residents committed to making city life kid-friendly and family-friendly John Bolster has been living in the community since 1993 and renovated three homes for his wife and now three children.

A middle-of-group rowhouse in West Baltimore was damaged in a fire Thursday morning. Fire authorities reported that no one was injured in the one-alarm blaze, which occurred in the 3000 block of Arunah Ave. about 7 a.m. An estimate on the property damage was not immediately available. Victoria Dillard, 19, was sleeping in the basement with a friend and her 2-year-old son when the fire broke out and they fled. Four other people in the house also escaped without injury. "I woke up, grabbed my son, and I went upstairs and started screaming," Dillard said.

Megan and Brian Murray want you to rent their house. It's a rehabbed two-bedroom rowhouse near Patterson Park with "lots of old charm and character." They're even cool with pets - there's a grassy backyard that would accommodate anything up to a Shetland pony. The problem is, you haven't rented their place yet. Neither has anyone else. And they've been trying to rent it for months. So now the Murrays are pulling out their big gun. "Rent our house, get free beer all summer!!" says their new ad on Craigslist and the Baltimore Sports and Social Club Web site.

The 7-year-old girl fell asleep Friday night, safe on a neighbor's couch. But shortly before midnight, her mother picked her up and took her to the home where they were staying, a rowhouse where the electricity had been shut off for more than a year. "I don't know why she'd do that, in the dark," said the neighbor, Keisha Council, 26. "She should have left her here." About two hours later, the rowhouse in the 1400 block of N. Broadway was an inferno, and the girl, whom neighbors knew as Regina, was trapped inside.

Man's body found in abandoned rowhouse Southern District police received an anonymous 911 call Wednesday afternoon, and when they entered an abandoned house in the Carrollton Ridge neighborhood they found the body of a man who had been shot, according to Agent Donny Moses, a city police spokesman. The man's name was withheld pending notification of family members and positive identification through fingerprints. Moses said the 911 call was from a police informant, and it led officers to a rowhouse in the 1900 block of Wilkens Ave. near South Monroe Street.

A man was shot Wednesday night and died early Thursday, and two men killed in separate, unrelated incidents were identified, police said. About 11:45 p.m. Wednesday, officers responded to a report of shots fired and found Dewayne M. Booker, 20, in the 2200 block of Sherwood Ave. in Northeast Baltimore. Booker, who was sought on a criminal warrant, had been shot a half-block away in the 1300 block of Bonaparte Ave., near his home. He was pronounced dead at Maryland Shock Trauma Center after midnight.

A small rowhouse blaze sent a Baltimore woman to the hospital yesterday with second- and third-degree burns on her upper body, city fire officials said. The fire, in the 600 block of S. Decker Ave. in Canton, was reported about 4:20 p.m., said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a Fire Department spokesman. Firefighters rescued one victim, a woman believed to be about 50 years old, from the first floor of the home, Cartwright said. She was taken to the Johns Hopkins Burn Center, where she was treated for second- and third-degree burns above her waist.