Around Maryland

Western Maryland Scenic Railroad officials said ticket sales for 2023 marked an all-time high for ridership with roughly 75,000 people boarding the attraction. However, with the good news came a little bad. Railroad officials announced recently that Maryland Thunder, the massive steam locomotive No. 1309, will be down for repairs for the first half of 2024.

There are nights when Christopher Vucci doesn’t get much sleep, worried that a drunk driver might crash a car into his house again. Vucci wasn’t living in the house on 28th Street last year — his late uncle was — when a car careened into the home, but he dealt with the consequences long after the wreck. It took months to get the rowhome’s glass-paned sunroom rebuilt; as they waited on Baltimore Gas and Electric, the broken gas hookup forced Vucci and his partner to start the winter without working heat.

It’s a new year and time to consider new paths Baltimore could take over the next decade. The West Baltimore MARC rail station, at the western end of the Franklin-Mulberry corridor, the so-called Highway to Nowhere, is one such starting place. There’s now money to replace the 151-year former Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel under West Baltimore, which has been renamed in honor of Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist who escaped from slavery in Maryland.

The Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection has been the focus of FBI manhunts for three years, with people from around the country being arrested. More than 1,265 defendants have been charged by the U.S. Department of Justice. Thirty-five have been found in Maryland, according to the George Washington University’s Capitol Hill Siege Legal Tracker.

Dwayne Preston joined the Bowie, Maryland, police force in 2012 after leaving the Prince George’s County Police Department. After the job of Chief of Police opened in September, he began serving as the department’s acting head. Now, after a Tuesday night swearing-in ceremony in front of the city council dais, Preston holds the title of Chief of Police, without the “acting” prefix.

As people return home from holiday travel and spending time with loved ones over the past couple weeks, the Maryland Department of Health is urging clinicians to strengthen protective measures to reduce the spread of respiratory illnesses. The rate of hospitalizations due to COVID-19 and other viruses increased during the last week of 2023, and the state Department of Health is urging clinicians to implement “broad facility-wide” prevention measures such as masking and vaccination efforts to bring the hospitalization rate back down.

Rafiullah Yari was the first pro boxer to show up on this day at the Upton Boxing Center in West Baltimore, the same place where Gervonta “Tank” Davis showed up some 21 years ago. Now Davis’ likeness as a world champion hangs throughout — a living patron saint embossed on the heavy bags stationed to take daily beatings in this marvelously austere but deliriously red-painted center that aspires all to train — to train hard, to the breaking point.

Suicide deaths and the number of adverse childhood experiences people reported have increased over the last several years in Frederick County, according to new Frederick County Health Department data. From 2010 to 2022, suicide deaths in the county have risen, with 23 deaths in 2010 and 33 deaths in 2021. More adults in 2020 reported experiencing at least one adverse childhood experience compared to previous years. An adverse childhood experience is a potentially traumatic event that occurs when a person is young.