Around Maryland

Casi O’Neill works at the heart of Maryland’s youth legal system, but she rarely does her job. If she did, the specially trained social worker hired by the Maryland Office of the Public Defender would be assessing the complex needs of children charged with low- to moderate-level crimes. As a forensic social worker and member of Baltimore’s juvenile division, O’Neill is trained to uncover why a child may have committed a crime in the first place.

A defining feature in the skyline of historic Frederick, Maryland, is in danger of condemnation, but there’s a new effort to preserve Frederick’s oldest spire and the City of Frederick’s clock tower. If you stand at 10 W Church St. and look straight up, you’ll see the stone face of Trinity Chapel topped with a wooden superstructure housing church bells, and above that, the clock.

Eight crew members of the Dali will be allowed to leave the country, after attorneys representing the city reached an agreement with the ship’s owner to ensure crew would be available for lawsuit-related interviews. The massive container ship crashed into the pylon of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in the early morning hours of March 26. Six men died when the bridge collapsed into the water, while one person survived the fall.

A decade of conflict and tension between Republican county executives and the Republican-dominated Wicomico County Council came to a boil Tuesday, as the council voted 5-2 for a ballot referendum asking voters to amend the county’s charter to do away with the elected executive — just two decades after that office was created.

Down among the rumpled, sandy hills of Millersville lies a secret stream. The rivulet is unseen by the drivers of 112,000 cars and trucks passing every day on Interstate 97. Farmers, home builders and highway engineers carved centuries of careless decisions into it. Choking on the muck they unleashed, the stream sent a brown plume into the Severn River with every passing storm.

Residents in a West Baltimore neighborhood still have questions and concerns after a woman was attacked and killed by two stray pit bulls Friday evening. “Why were the dogs not on a leash?” Tiara asked. “It could have been more than one person getting killed.” Two stray pit bulls were roaming North Pulaski Street around 9 p.m. when they mauled multiple women. A 50-year-old woman died at the scene, according to police.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore made history Monday by signing an executive order to pardon 100,000 Marylanders convicted of low-level marijuana charges. A total of 175,000 convictions were pardoned. The order was the largest pardon for misdemeanor cannabis possession charges for any state in the country. Including drug paraphernalia in the order makes Maryland the first state to take this kind of action, according to Moore’s office.