Around Maryland

A busy stretch of East North Avenue will be closed indefinitely after a sinkhole opened up in a sidewalk Monday and forced several people out of their homes in the East Baltimore Midway neighborhood. At least three houses in the 700 block of East North Avenue need to be demolished immediately because their structures have been compromised, Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said Tuesday afternoon at a news conference. Only one of the properties was occupied and no one was injured, Scott said, adding that the city will be assisting those displaced.

It has been nearly 10 months since Mervo High football player Elijah Gorham passed away after suffering a brain injury during a game. Gorham’s mother, Shantres Shaw, says it took nearly an hour for her son to be transported to the hospital. “It’s very important to get to the athletes, to actually get them to where they need to be,” Shaw said. Since the tragedy, Shaw has been calling for change, championing a bill named in her honor that would require middle schools and high schools to develop venue-specific emergency action plans for injuries and severe weather.

The Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development’s Maryland Mortgage Program is launching a variety of new home loan products to provide more flexible options for down payments and closing cost assistance, according to housing officials. The new financial assistance will help additional Marylanders buy their dream homes. “In this challenging housing climate, when interest rates are increasing and affordable housing inventory is low, the state of Maryland is always looking for innovative offerings to make homeownership affordable,” Department of Housing and Community Development Secretary Kenneth Holt said.

A recreational water quality advisory remains in effect at Cox’s Point Park after samples revealed moderately high levels of E. coli by the boat ramp. Baltimore County’s Department of Health Division of Environmental Health Services posted warning signs at the park on Riverside Drive in Essex. The recreational water quality advisory states that water-related activities may pose an increased health risk and suggests following certain precautions, including avoiding and minimizing contact with natural waters whenever cloudy. “We are certainly looking into what might be causing it,” Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski, Jr. “Large rain events are always a contributing factor and we’re looking at all other potential contributors as well.”

For Londyn Smith-De Richelieu, the new director of LGBTQ Affairs for Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, the rate which Black transgender women are being killed is unacceptable. Her job is to change that, she said. For example, Bailey Reeves, 17, who is Black, was shot in the torso in Northeast Baltimore, The Sun reported in 2019; Reeves, of Rockville, later died at a nearby hospital.

Protests continue more than a week after the U.S. Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v. Wade., even outside the houses of the justices who voted to strike the precedent down.  Pro-abortion rights protesters have brought their outrage outside the private homes of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts in Chevy Chase, Maryland, sparking some security concerns. The Marshal of the United States Supreme Court has asked the governors of Maryland and Virginia to enforce local and state laws that “prohibit picketing at the homes of” the justices.

On July 5, 1852, the day after Independence Day, abolitionist and orator Frederick Douglass delivered a speech in Rochester, New York, called “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Nearly 170 years after his blistering indictment of slavery in America, following the swearing-in of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson onto an embattled Supreme Court, the question remains top of mind for one Prince George’s County resident: retired Maryland Circuit Court Judge Ingrid Turner.