South Baltimore

He was married, the proud father of three. He'd founded a construction company that was doing well, even in the midst of a recession. And after years of working what he calls "32-hour days," Michael Pomory was even finding time for a hobby he'd dropped years before: jamming with friends on his guitar. "I really thought I'd found a groove that would last the rest of my life," says Pomory, a South Baltimore native, in a voice made gravelly from years of smoking. Then he lost it all. Even now, it's hard to grasp how so much hard luck could hit one person in a single year: the divorce, the foundering of the company, the depression that set in and wouldn't go away.

Baltimore's Board of Estimates has approved the final variable of a formula that will dictate the amount developers in South Baltimore pay for road improvements. The new formula replaces time-consuming traffic impact studies and ad hoc negotiations between developers and the city, which for years have determined what builders pay to mitigate the traffic produced by their developments. "Sometimes [developers would] end up spending more on the traffic impact study than on the mitigation fees themselves," said Jamie Kendrick, the city's deputy director of transportation.

A 69-year-old man died Thursday night after he was struck by a car while walking across a South Baltimore street, according to police. The man was crossing the 3100 block of S. Hanover St. about 9:15 p.m. when he was hit by a 2002 Dodge Intrepid traveling north, police said. The victim, who was not identified, was taken to Harbor Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 9:45 p.m., according to police. Police said neither speed nor alcohol appeared to be factors in the accident, which remains under investigation.

ON THE SITE... MARC train fatally strikes pedestrian near Essex : A southbound train stopped about 7 a.m. Tuesday and the crew announced a fatality, which Baltimore County police later confirmed. IndyCar Series looking for new Grand Prix organizer : Strife within race group Downforce Racing LLC is leading IndyCar to seek a new local group or manage the auto race itself in four months. City Council OK's mayor's property tax reduction plan : Members voted Monday night to approve a plan to cut property taxes by up to $400 by 2020.

The body of a man who had been fatally stabbed was found near the intersection of Pennington Avenue and Aspen Street in southern Baltimore Saturday afternoon, police said. Baltimore police said the body was located at about 2 p.m. in the Curtis Bay community, which borders Anne Arundel County and is surrounded by wooded and industrial areas. A fenced industrial area off Aspen Street was being blocked by a police car Saturday afternoon. A uniformed officer turned away several men on ATVs who were planning to go up into the area for recreation.

A 52-year-old South Baltimore man, who was shot by police after pointing a pellet gun at officers, died from his injuries, officials said. Anthony Guglielmi, the police department's chief spokesman, said officers were called to the 3600 block of St. Victor Street before 9 p.m. for a report of an armed person. When they got there, the man, who was holding what turned out to be a pellet gun, refused to drop the weapon and was shot when he turned toward the officers. He was taken to a local hospital, where he later was pronounced dead.

Vincent Mario "Vince" Rallo, a former banker who in retirement took over Rallo's Restaurant, a Locust Point landmark since 1941, died Thursday morning of lung cancer at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. The longtime Homeland resident was 79. Rallo's, in the 800 block of E. Fort Ave., was established by Mr. Rallo's father, Louis Rallo, an immigrant from Sicily who settled in Baltimore in 1910. The restaurant was known for its generous breakfasts that included scrapple, an old-fashioned menu staple, as well as bacon, sausage, corned beef hash and sizzling ham. There were heaping portions of beef or chicken stew, lima bean and pea soup, fried crab cakes, chili con carne, Spanish omelets, braunschweiger sandwiches, and sour beef and dumplings.

Two men have been arrested and charged in a failed firebombing at a South Baltimore home where a 2-month-old boy was among the seven occupants, police said. Officers responded to the 500 block of Baltic Ave. in Brooklyn about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday after occupants reported that they had heard knocking at their back door and saw two men with a knife and a club. They called 911, and the pair fled. They two returned shortly after and threw a Molotov cocktail that struck a first-floor rear window but failed to ignite the accelerant.

As much as any 5-year-old could be, Jake Owen was a fixture in South Baltimore. He hung out at the pool, played on the soccer team and ran through Riverside Park, an expanse of green across the street from his rowhouse. The kindergartner, who was killed on Wednesday in an accident on the Baltimore Beltway, was recognized as much for his spirit as for his family ties — nephew of a former gubernatorial aide, classmate of children of a school board member, the chief mayoral spokesman and a city councilman.

Paper lanterns swung beneath exposed I-beams, while big TV screens flashed images above them. Sounds of swing music intermingled with the rustle of ball gowns on concrete, as guests swirled through the renovation at Tide Point for the Dot.Com Gala. As if there wasn't enough glitz inside, Inner Harbor waters glittered outside, providing a delightful backdrop as guests celebrated the 10th anniversary of the South Baltimore Learning Center. Among the 330 guests nibbling from the buffet and networking with old friends and new: Donald Huber and Kathleen Leebel, event co-chairs; Cindy Conklin, Ann Murray and Peggy Powell, event committee members; Chris Rosenthal, South Baltimore Learning Center board chair; Susan Fleishman and Jonathan Melnick, SBLC board members; Sonia Socha, SBLC executive director; Carol Hirschburg, Howard Consulting vice president; Sonny Morstein, Morstein's Jewelers owner; Doug McPeters, Legg Mason vice president of investments; Mario Armstrong, host / producer of "Tech-Talk" on WEAA-FM radio; Gary Goldstein, Kennedy Krieger Institute president; Byron Sembly, Falcon Business Solutions president / CEO; Sharon Wylie, Fox 45 / WB54 director of public affairs and marketing; Debbie Kielty, Procter & Gamble Beauty Care vice president; Rose Carpenter, FILA USA general counsel; James Breiner, Baltimore Business Journal publisher; and Ann Murray, Maryland Science Center senior director of development.

Long before ecdysiast Blaze Starr became the reigning Queen of The Block, there was the legendary Bettye Mills, who arose from humble Pigtown origins to become one of the tenderloin district's more memorable characters and nightclub owners — which in those days The Baltimore Sun politely called "cabarets. " What brought Mills' name back in the news was the death earlier this month of her son-in-law, James Thomas Lee "Jimmy" Stubbs, 95, who in the late 1940s was day manager of Mills' Stork Club, whose name was later changed to the Bettye Mills' Club.

At 2 a.m. last Saturday, small clusters of people - young, old, black, white, suburbanites and city dwellers - made their way to a cavernous warehouse underneath the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. It was the same excursion thousands of others have made over the past 21 years to the Paradox, the 13,000-square-foot renovated warehouse in the outskirts of Baltimore. The club, alongside Club Fantasy (since closed) and Club Choices, is where B-more Club music, the furiously aggressive strain of hip-hop and house, was cultivated and finessed - where DJs K-Swift and Ultra Nate got started.

Baltimore's top cop on Tuesday warned against "race-baiting" amid rising tensions across the nation, citing the Trayvon Martin case and cautioning that a video generating outrage on the Internet of a tourist being beaten and stripped in downtown Baltimore doesn't appear to depict a hate crime. Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, appearing on WBAL's C4 program, said the attack on a 31-year-old Arlington, Va. Caucasian man appears to be nothing beyond "drunken opportunistic criminality.

Julien Rosaly's father does not accept that Baltimore police did the best investigation they could with the information they had. He wants them to apologize for arresting his son and friend and charging him with robbing a couple at gunpoint in South Baltimore. But police and prosecutors will mostly likely not say they're sorry, despite dropping all charges against the two men on Friday after reviewing a videotape that shows Rosaly eating in a restaurant at the time of the attack.

Two men accused of robbing a couple who were walking home from a Federal Hill restaurant last weekend have been freed from jail and cleared of all charges by prosecutors, who acknowledge it was a case of mistaken identification. One victim said she would "never forget" the faces of her assailants. But surveillance video shows the man identified by the victims as the gunman was in a pizzeria on Light Street on Saturday a few minutes after 1 a.m., the same time the victims were being robbed of jewelry and cellphones 15 blocks away at Covington and Clement streets.

The young woman who was held up at gunpoint last weekend in South Baltimore is certain she identified the correct two suspects for police. She focused on their faces, she said Tuesday, knowing "it would be the only thing that would get them. " But the mother of one of the men charged in Saturday's attack is just as certain that he was sitting in a Federal Hill pizzeria at the time, and the shop's manager says he has video to prove it. Tuesday evening, relatives protested the arrests outside the Southern District police station.

Maybe it was the mountain-bike heist. Former first daughter Jenna Bush and her husband, Henry Hager , have moved out of their South Baltimore rowhouse and put it up for sale. The couple bought the two-story, 1880s rowhouse in March 2008 for $440,000, and moved in shortly after their wedding that May. The 3BR, 3BA end-of-group property, listed this week for $474,900, boasts a private garage, "luxurious sea grass carpeting" and unspecified "security features.

Lauren Spates, a 27-year-old former cheerleader for the Ravens, says she knows who attacked her and her husband early Saturday at South Baltimore's Clement and Covington streets. She looked long and hard, she said, knowing her identification "would be the only thing that would get them. " In an interview on Tuesday, Spates said, "Believe me, I'll never forget that man's face when he asked me to take my rings off my finger. " The attack early Saturday in which Spates and her new husband were robbed at gunpoint -- she of her engagement ring and wedding band, worth a combined $22,000 -- has stunned the residential neighborhood north of Fort Avenue.