Rowhouse

This could be called the block of death. David Mitchell, 16, was shot on a sidewalk here on April 29. Arthur Peacock, 34, was shot on the street here on Sept. 30. Derrius Currie, 21, was found shot inside a vacant rowhouse here on Saturday. Three killings on one city block — more violent death than on any other single block in Baltimore this year. There have been blocks with two deaths: A man was killed in the 6900 block of McLean Blvd. in January and another in July, and a man was killed in the 2600 block of Quantico Ave. in August and another in September.

It's a crisp fall afternoon, and Robbye and Kevin Apperson are savoring a quiet Sunday in the parlor of their Reservoir Hill home. Dappled sunlight streams through shuttered windows, softly illuminating ocher-colored walls and a white marble fireplace. Gold and crystal chandeliers shimmer from 12-foot ceilings. The original hardwood floors are buffed to a gentle sheen. "There's something magical about our home," says Robbye Apperson, smiling at her husband of 26 years, who nods in agreement.

Rose M. Cernak, longtime owner of Obrycki's , the East Baltimore bar and crab house whose crab seasoning and jumbo crab cakes earned it undying loyalty from locals as well as actors, sports figures and politicians, died Sunday of cancer at her HarborView condominium. She was 79. Rose Marani, the daughter of an Italian immigrant and first-generation American, was born in Baltimore and raised in Canton in a Potomac Street rowhouse. After graduating in 1948 from the old Patterson Park High School, Mrs. Cernak entered Strayer's Business College.

The moving truck pulled away from the curb, loaded with Wallace Farmer's possessions. He locked the front door for the last time and left town — clutched by a long-simmering anger that finally gave way to relief. Farmer didn't sell his Baltimore house, worth far less than the $180,000 he paid in 2006. And he didn't lose it to foreclosure. He walked away from the rowhouse and the mortgage. It's the bank's problem now. "These lenders, they don't care about the community.

Robert Hall could only think of saving his grandmother's friends and neighbors when he tried to race past the flames and smoke that were quickly consuming their Hampden rowhouse Monday morning. He was able to get Betty Lou Shipe, 82, out of the house by flinging open the front door, which she was struggling to unlock, but she died Tuesday of injuries suffered in the blaze. "I had to run into the fire," Hall said. "I grabbed her and ran back out. " Shipe died at 8:45 a.m. Tuesday at Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, according to Baltimore Fire Department spokesman Kevin Cartwright.

An early-morning rowhouse fire in West Baltimore claimed the life of a 3-year-old Sunday, fire officials said. Firefighters found heavy smoke and fire coming from the second story of a brick rowhouse when they arrived at the 2500 block of West Lanvale Street around 2:45 a.m. The fire was limited to a single bedroom on the second floor, and it was there that the search-and-rescue crew found the body of a child. An official cause of death will be determined by the state medical examiner, but it appears that the child died from smoke inhalation and burns, said Chief Kevin Cartwright, a spokesman for the city fire department.

Tim Nickels' rowhouse in Baltimore went to tax sale over less than $4 in unpaid property taxes and hundreds of dollars in citations for a messy yard. Perfectly legal, under the city's rules. But Nickels was flabbergasted. Baltimore's annual tax sale, an effort by the city to collect on delinquent accounts, has drawn criticism for putting residents at risk of losing their homes over municipal bills as small as $250. Nickels' past-due tab of $955.60 — including the citation fines and late fees — was one of 6,421 unpaid city bills recently sold as liens to investors, who can move to foreclose later this year if the owners don't pay up with interest.

It all started as a search for a new wheelchair ramp. Every time Tavonia Randall needed to take her mother out of the house, she had to push her in a wheelchair down a steep ramp at the back of their Park Heights rowhouse. The maneuver was dangerous for both Randall and her mother, Gladys Cole, 73. Once they left the house that they share, "We would stay out all day," Randall said. "That ramp was a killer." Randall stumbled across the website of Rebuilding Together Baltimore as she sought a new ramp, and to her surprise, the nonprofit agreed to outfit her home not only with a wheelchair lift, but also with many other wheelchair-accessible features.

Former University of Maryland pharmacologist Clinton B. McCracken has been deported to his native Canada, ending more than three months of limbo since he pleaded guilty in March to growing marijuana. "I am thrilled he's back home," said his lawyer, David B. Irwin. He said McCracken, 33, was transported north June 29, 17 days after immigration authorities picked him up in Baltimore and sent him to a detention center in York, Pa. The deportation ends an odyssey for McCracken that began last September when his 29-year-old fiancee, Carrie E. John, a fellow pharmacologist at Maryland, died in a drug-shooting session at their Ridgely's Delight rowhouse.

syoung When Lisa Nguyen relocated to Baltimore from Atlanta in 2006, she decided to buy a home in Federal Hill. "I liked the quaint neighborhood [and] the diversity of people and restaurants," Nguyen said. Nguyen, a 30-year-old medical devices salesperson, knew exactly what she wanted from city living — the stability of home ownership with the proper mix of excitement beyond her front door and a cozy retreat behind it. She quickly found a two-story, red brick rowhouse that had been recently rehabbed and was "in reasonably good shape," purchasing the property for $495,000.