Sinai Hospital

Gun violence penetrated several city neighborhoods Tuesday and resulted in several critical injuries. Four men were shot and a fifth man appears to have taken his life, according to police. Shortly before 7:30 p.m., officers responded to a home in the 900 block of Iris Ave. in the East Baltimore neighborhood of Orangeville to find a man dead from a gunshot wound to the head, according to Sgt. Valencia Nock, a police spokeswoman. Autopsy results are pending, but police believe the wound was self-inflicted.

Some Ravens fans probably wanted to cry like babies when their team lost Sunday's playoff game against the New England Patriots . But one Baltimore baby had reason to smile after the game, even though she's too young to realize it yet. Shaina and Gershom Segal gave birth to a little girl at the Herman & Walter Samuelson Children's Hospital at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore the same night as the game. She'll get a $3,000 savings bond as part of a contest by the hospital to reward the first baby born after the start of the game.

The first baby born at Sinai Hospital during Sunday's Ravens game is going to get a little contribution toward their financial future. The Northwest Baltimore hospital is going to give a $3,000 savings bond to the first baby born after the kick off of the game against the New England Patriots. The hospital sees the gift as a way to celebrate the Ravens' success and cheer them on during the playoffs. "That baby will literally be able to say he or she was born a Ravens fan," said  Neil Meltzer, president and COO of Sinai.

Ruth L. Thomas, whose philanthropic interests ranged from medical and educational institutions to helping newly arrived immigrants, died Wednesday of complications from a stroke at Springhouse Assisted-Living in Pikesville. Mrs. Thomas would have celebrated her 98th birthday this coming week. The daughter of Jacob Legum, founder of Park Circle Motor Co., and Rose l. Legum, a homemaker, Ruth Legum was born in Norfolk, Va., and moved with her family to Fairview Avenue in Forest Park in 1917.

Benjamin Herman, a free-lance writer and author whose stories of ordinary people and daily life in Jewish East Baltimore and industrial Dundalk entertained newspaper readers for more than 60 years, died Monday of a cardiac arrest at Sinai Hospital. He was 84 and had lived in Towson for the past decade. If author John O'Hara had Gibbsville, Pa., William Faulkner Oxford, Miss., and Isaac Bashevis Singer the ghettoes of Eastern Europe, then Mr. Herman's milieu was Dundalk and the East Baltimore neighborhood where his grandparents lived and whose atmosphere and tales he absorbed as a young boy. "I have been to Europe, Russia, Africa, the Far East and South America," Mr. Herman told Contemporary Authors Online in 2001.

Baltimore County police were searching for four men after a man was found shot in the basement of a Randallstown home Friday evening. Officers were called at about 5 p.m. to the 3500 block of Corn Stream Road, where they found a 20-year-old man who had been shot. He was taken to Sinai Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, police said. Police were searching for four men in their late teens. No additional information was immediately available. jkanderson@baltsun.com Text NEWS to 70701 to get Baltimore Sun local news text alerts

Neil Meltzer is known in Baltimore circles as the head of Sinai Hospital, but he has also become a player in shaping health care reform. Meltzer has been chosen as one of 15 people to serve as a member of the Government Accountability Office's National Health Care Workforce Commission. Meltzer, chief operating officer and president of Sinai Hospital and senior vice president of LifeBridge Health, was told this month by Gene Dodaro, acting comptroller general of the United States and head of the GAO, that he had appointed to the commission.

Tents framed the entrance to Meyerhoff Symphony Hall for "The Magic of Life Gala," the biannual fundraiser for LifeBridge Health. Inside the tents and the Meyerhoff's lobby, guests were greeted by event chairs Joseph and Annette Cooper , Jon and Susan Levinson and John and Laura Shmerler . With more than 1,000 guests in attendance, that meant lots of hugs and air kisses. Lucky recipients included: Lowell R. Glazer , Sinai Hospital board chair; Neil Meltzer , Sinai Hospital president, and wife, Ellen Meltzer , private tutor; Henry Rosenberg , Rosemore Inc. chairman, and wife, Dot Rosenberg ; retired W.B. Doner & Co. chairman/CEO Herb Fried and wife, Nikki Fried ; Wil Sirota , LifeBridge board member; Alexis Vandernat , Long & Foster real estate agent; Louis Thalheimer , Lord Baltimore Capital CEO, and wife, Juliet Eurich , Alvin & Fanny B. Thalheimer Foundation executive director; Nan Rosenthal , Baltimore-based public relations consultant; Dr. Larry Becker , semi-retired orthopedic surgeon, and wife, Alma Becker ; and Michele Lax , the Pearlstone Conference Center president, and husband, Barry Garber , Sinai Hospital board member.

Sinai Hospital has agreed to pay a $60,000 fine for irradiating a cancer patient in the wrong place, while Constellation Energy paid $12,670 for muddying a mountain stream as it builds a wind farm in Western Maryland, the state Department of the Environment reported Wednesday. The two cases were among 40 enforcement cases in which state regulators reported collecting or levying more than $500,000 in penalties in the past several weeks for air, water, radiation and lead paint violations.