The nonprofit, currently based out of a South Haven Street facility, “has contracted to build a new 34,000-square-foot headquarters on vacant land at the rear of EVSC,” according to a news release.

The new headquarters will house administrative offices, food preparation kitchens and home-delivery operations, according to the release.

Founded in 1960, Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland provides services for seniors, disabled individuals and other vulnerable adults. In addition to food delivery, the nonprofit offers wellness and safety checks, social phone calls, crisis response, nutrition education, home repairs, grocery shopping, pet food delivery and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program screening and case management for seniors, according to the release.

“Our dedicated staff and volunteers deliver more than 1.4 million meals annually, and, as the number of older adults continues to grow, we know our future requires a larger, more modern, and environmentally conscious home for our organization,” Stephanie Archer-Smith, executive director of Meals on Wheels for Central Maryland, said in a release. “We are looking forward to working with our partners and neighbors to bring this project to fruition.”

The Edmondson Village Shopping Center — known locally as “The Village” — opened in 1947 and was sold in 2023 for $17 million to Chicago-based developer Lyneir Richardson.

“The state of Maryland, the city of Baltimore, and 200 Edmondson Village residents have invested over $10.8M in the modernization of EVSC,” Richardson said in the release. “This modernization now makes it possible for us to welcome Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland.”

Edmondson Village Shopping Center through the years | PHOTOS

The shopping center, once treasured for its distinctive Colonial Williamsburg architecture and its Christmas lights, has in recent years become known for crime and the occasional fire. In 2023, it was the site of a shooting that left 16-year-old Deanta Dorsey dead and four other teens wounded.

The city and developers hope to change that narrative.

“Opening the door to the next era of the historic Edmondson Village Shopping Center’s future was a community effort through and through,” Mayor Brandon Scott said in a news release. “We’re finally able to pursue a redevelopment that’s bringing the crucial community support services of Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland to this extraordinary neighborhood and beyond.”

Contact Dillon Mullan at dmullan@baltsun.com, 302-842-3818 or @DillonMullan on X.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the planned Meals of Wheels facility as a distribution center. 

Patricia Lesnick, who had lived on the 300 block of South Newkirk Street for more than 30 years, died in the fire, according to her brother, Albert Lesnick. Neighbors described the 71-year-old woman as a kind retiree who loved her dog.

“This really broke this neighborhood’s heart,” said longtime Newkirk Street resident Monica Lemus, who had known her elderly neighbor for roughly 20 years. “Everybody was outside; everybody was outside crying.”

The fire department did not identify the victim other than describing her as a “female civilian.” Albert Lesnick, who no longer lives in Baltimore, said he did not know much about his sister’s death other than what police had told him Monday night, though he expected to hear more on Tuesday. He had been told his sister died of smoke inhalation.

Baltimore Fire officials said Tuesday that smoke, fire and water affected eight residences during Monday evening’s fatal blaze. The American Red Cross is assisting six families with recovery resources, including financial assistance, mental and emotional support and help replacing essential items lost in the fire, a spokesperson said.

Firefighters responded shortly after 5 p.m. to a report of a dwelling fire and found heavy smoke and flames in the front and back of two residences, the fire department said. The conflagration was eventually upgraded to a three-alarm fire as it quickly spread to other units, according to the department.

The fire was contained and extinguished by 7:45 p.m., the fire department said. Lesnick died at her home, 308 S. Newkirk St., and no other injuries were reported.

“Pat was a dedicated public defender who went above and beyond for her clients,” said Marguerite E. Lanaux, the district public defender for Baltimore City who worked with Lesnick at Baltimore’s Hargrove District Court. “She will be truly missed in the community.”

Maryland Public Defender Natasha M. Dartigue said that Lesnick’s death was a “tragedy,” adding that the office’s “condolences go out to Pat’s family and all those who loved her.”

Neighbors remembered Lesnick, known to some as “Ms. Pat,” as a generous woman who often walked her dog and gave away extra grocery store coupons to families in the neighborhood. Lesnick had given Lemus “very good advice when I went through stuff.”

“I know that she’s in a better place with her dog,” Lemus said. Marsh could not confirm whether a dog died in the fire, noting that Animal Control officers were not called to the scene.

The fire department is investigating the cause of the fire. Three rowhouses were marked with red signs Tuesday afternoon denoting them as unsafe as crews swept up broken glass. Another rowhome had its windows boarded up, and people were packing up items upstairs in a fifth residence next to a broken window.

Teresa Heatly, who lives in the 200 block of South Newkirk Street, said she “saw fire shooting from the roof” up the block on Monday night.

“Just before the holidays that is so sad,” she said.

The Greektown Neighborhood Association said Tuesday on social media that it would be collecting donations of essential items after Thanksgiving at John Ruhrah Elementary/Middle School and was collecting monetary donations online.

Have a news tip? Contact Dan Belson at dbelson@baltsun.com. Contact Dillon Mullan at dmullan@baltsun.com. Baltimore Sun photojournalist Kevin Richardson contributed to this article.

A three-alarm fire started in the 300 block of South Newkirk Street in the Greektown neighborhood, the Baltimore City Fire Department said around 6 p.m.

“I looked down the block and saw fire shooting from the roof. It was not easy. They had a hard time getting it out,” Teresa Heatly, who lives in the 200 block of South Newkirk Street, said by the scene. “Just before the holidays that is so sad.”

The department said the fire was contained and extinguished around 7:30 p.m. Later on Monday night the smell of burned belongings filled the neighborhood as displaced families waited outside for their homes to be cleared for re-entry.

Yaretzy Roblero, a 15-year-old who lives a few houses away from the home where the fire started, said around 9:30 p.m. that her family was still waiting for emergency personnel to inspect damage to their roof.

“I went to my room to go change, and I started smelling smoke. I ran downstairs and looked outside and saw everybody running from their houses. We were really scared it was going to spread to our house,” Roblero said while waiting in an alleyway behind her home with her parents. “They’re telling us our roof might collapse because of the water.”

Baltimore Police closed parts of Eastern Avenue to limit traffic through Greektown on Monday night. The fire was a pocket of rowhomes in Northern Greektown between Eastern Avenue and East Lombard Street, and Interstate 895.

Baltimore Fire did not identify the victim Monday night. Roblero and other neighbors described the resident of the home as a kind elderly woman who was often seen walking her dogs and gave away extra grocery store coupons to families.

“She was really nice you would see her walking around everyday, and she would never bother anybody,” Roblero said.

Contact Dillon Mullan at dmullan@baltsun.com, 302-842-3818 or @DillonMullan on X.

Baltimore City Circuit Court approved the settlement agreement on Friday, the release said. The firm represented three individual plaintiffs and a class of thousands who participated in a 1994 settlement agreement with Baltimore-area asbestos installer MCIC, Inc., formerly known as McCormick Asbestos Company.

The firm’s release said that the 1994 settlement had been predicated on an agreement that MCIC’s insurers would pay out all available insurance to a settlement fund.

“The class action lawsuit arose from decisions by Maryland courts that Defendants waited too long to recover certain additional insurance that had not been disclosed by MCIC’s insurers,” the firm said in the release. “Defendants deny liability but agreed to the $57 million class settlement with the expectation that these funds will bring meaningful relief to Marylanders.”

The class action was filed in 2021. A spokesperson for Gallagher Evelius & Jones did not return requests for comment Monday.

According to a website for potential class recipients, the Law Offices of Peter Angelos reached a settlement agreement with MCIC worth between $1,000 and $9,500 per claim in 1994. Around 1998, the Angelos firm discovered “substantial additional insurance applicable to the claims,” according to Gallagher Evelius & Jones. MCIC and its insurers did not distribute the additional insurance claims, and the Angelos firm filed a motion to enforce the settlement agreement in 2002, which was dismissed on the grounds that too much time had passed.

In 2021, the plaintiffs represented by Gallagher Evelius & Jones filed a lawsuit alleging legal malpractice over the MCIC settlement agreement and named the Law Offices of Peter Angelos and some of its attorneys as defendants, Gallagher Evelius & Jones said. The settlement in that case will now pay $57 million to potentially more than 7,000 beneficiaries based on their injury categories set in the 1994 MCIC settlement.

Gallagher Evelius & Jones said the funds for the settlement are mostly from Angelos’ estate. The former owner of the Orioles died at 94 in March 2023. Angelos won more than $1 billion in damages from asbestos companies during the 1990s.

“We are delighted that Peter’s legacy and the ongoing commitment of his family have ensured a resolution that serves to add further benefit for so many historic clients of our firm,” Jay Miller, general counsel of the Law Offices of Peter Angelos said in the news release.

Notice of the class settlement was issued to class members earlier this year, and initial payments are expected to start in January, Gallagher Evelius & Jones said.

Contact Dillon Mullan at dmullan@baltsun.com, 302-842-3818 or @DillonMullan on X.

The study was a “rapid retrospective analysis of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) cases from Baltimore City between January 2020 and December 2022, using data from the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival.”

The study was published in the Dove Medical Press and is credited as collaboration between Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore City Community College, the University of Maryland, and the Baltimore City Fire Department. What it found was not encouraging, the study concludes.

“The findings of this preliminary analysis reveal that, as of 2022, individuals experiencing non-traumatic OHCA in Baltimore City were approximately 45% less likely to receive BCPR compared to both state and national averages,” the study’s authors wrote.

“This stark disparity persists despite the implementation of dispatch-assisted CPR protocols and targeted community education programs,” they wrote. “These results underscore the pressing need to explore and address the underlying barriers that contribute to the alarmingly low BCPR rates in Baltimore City.”

According to Hopkins, cardiac arrest is when the heart stops beating suddenly, and the lack of blood flow to the brain and other organs can cause a person to lose consciousness, become disabled or die if not treated immediately.

The study found 4,113 cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest from 2020 to 2022 in Baltimore City with a bystander CPR rate that decreased from 29.6% in 2020 to 27.4% in 2022.

During the same period, the bystander CPR rate in Maryland ranged from 40.7% to 42.4% compared to around 40% nationally.

In 2022, nearly 71% of cases happened at homes or residences and victims had an average age of about 59. About 59% of cases were males and nearly 75% were African-Americans, according to the study.

The study found out of 1,282 cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Baltimore in 2022, a bystander performed CPR in 27.4% of them, compared to over 40% in Maryland and nationwide.

“Addressing these disparities may necessitate a health equity-focused investigation into public awareness, CPR training access, and sociocultural factors,” the study says.

There are nearly half a million cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest each year in the United States, according to the study, and less than 10% of victims survive to hospital discharge.

“Immediate intervention has been identified as a key determinant of both survival and favorable neurological outcomes,” the study says.

The study defines bystander CPR as any resuscitative effort provided by a layperson or non-medical professional prior to EMS arrival.

“These results underscore the pressing need to explore and address the underlying barriers that contribute to the alarmingly low [bystander CPR] rates in Baltimore City,” the study says. “Socioeconomic factors, including race/ethnicity, income inequality and education, have been linked to lower bystander CPR rates in underserved populations.”

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The crash was on MD Route 3, also known as Crain Highway, near the intersection with Church View Road, police said.

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“I was shocked and deeply saddened to find out this morning that our beloved Admiral of the Chesapeake, and Blacks of the Chesapeake founder, Vincent Omar Leggett has passed away,” Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman said on social media Sunday. “All of us must now come together and carry on his great work.”

Leggett was born in Baltimore in 1953 to Charlie Leggett, a labor union representative, and Willie Mae Leggett, an elementary school teacher, according to a biography published by Yale University. He graduated from Morgan State University with a bachelor’s degree in urban planning in 1975.

A former president of the Anne Arundel County Board of Education, Leggett also worked for Baltimore City Schools, the Anne Arundel County housing authority and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources.

In 2010, Leggett told The Baltimore Sun that in 1984 he started a mission to visit as many of the bay’s port towns and villages as possible to start piecing together a collective story of Black life on the Chesapeake. Through his nonprofit, Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation, he started lecturing about how the bay and its tributaries served as part of the Underground Railroad.

“I’d read of all the shipbuilders, boat captains and shipping magnates who supposedly made bay history, most of them members of the majority community,” Leggett said. “Every book would have a picture of a Black crab picker or oyster shucker. The caption would simply say ‘crab picker’ or ‘oyster shucker.’ There’d never be a name. These people worked.”

“They must have had families, raised children, lived lives. Who were they? What did they do?” Leggett asked

He published his first book, “Blacks of the Chesapeake: An Integral Part of Maritime History,” in 1997, followed by his second, “The Chesapeake Bay through Ebony Eyes,” in 1999.

In 2000, through the Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation, Leggett worked with the Smithsonian and U.S. Library of Congress on a collection of more than 40,000 images portraying Black families and their lifestyles, tradition and work keeping Maryland’s seafood and maritime industries thriving. The core of the collection is from 1980 onward, according to the state archives.

“This irreplaceable, extensive collection began as a labor of love 35 years ago for [Black of the Chesapeake Foundation] founder Vincent Leggett. He sought to capture, document, and chronicle African American life along the reaches of the Chesapeake Bay, before time and evolving generations allowed it to float away,” the Maryland State Archives says of the collection.

Leggett and his foundation also were integral in the creation of Elktonia-Carr’s Beach Heritage Park, a public park project in Anne Arundel County launched in 2022 on the site of two popular Chesapeake Bay resorts, Carr’s and Sparrow’s Beaches, that were a haven to the Black community during segregation. Sarah Vaughn, Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington all performed there.

“This is a dream come true,” Leggett told The Sun about the project in 2022.

“He illuminated untold stories and ensured that future generations would know and honor the vital role that Blacks played in shaping the Bay’s heritage,” Chesapeake Conservancy President and CEO Joel Dunn said in a statement Sunday. “Vince’s work transcended the archives and pages of history books.”

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly reported the date of Leggett’s death. The Sun regrets the error.

Have a news tip? Contact Dillon Mullan at dmullan@baltsun.com, 302-842-3818 or @DillonMullan on X.

According to court records, a tort claim over negligence was filed Oct. 23 that names five Johns Does as plaintiffs and WWE Entertainment, parent company TWKO Group Holdings as well as Linda and Vince McMahon as defendants in Baltimore County Circuit Court.

According to The Associated Press, the lawsuit accuses the WWE and its founders of looking the other way while a longtime ringside announcer preyed on young men he hired as “ring boys.”

The suit was filed after the state’s statute of limitations for child sex abuse claims was eliminated in 2023, and the complaint alleges that Melvin Phillips, who died in 2012, assaulted boys in his dressing room, hotels and locker rooms. Phillips worked for WWE from the 1970s to the early 1990s.The McMahons were well aware of Phillips’ misconduct but did little to stop him, the complaint alleges, according to AP, and the plaintiffs were between 13 and 15 when they met Phillips.

An attorney representing Vince McMahon, Jessica Rosenberg, told the AP last month that the claims were false.

“We will vigorously defend Mr. McMahon and are confident the court will find that these claims are untrue and unfounded,” Rosenberg said in a statement.

Attorneys for both sides did not return requests for comment late Thursday.

Laura Brevetti, an attorney for Linda McMahon, called the allegations false in a response to a CNN report.

“This civil lawsuit based upon thirty-plus year-old allegations is filled with scurrilous lies, exaggerations and misrepresentations regarding Linda McMahon,” Brevetti told CNN. “Ms. McMahon will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit and without doubt ultimately succeed.”

McMahon previously led the Small Business Administration under former President Donald Trump.

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Officers responded around 8:35 p.m. to the 100 block of Dolfield Avenue in the Dolfield neighborhood and found the victim with gunshot wounds, Baltimore Police said.

Medics took him to a hospital where he was declared dead, police said.

Anyone with information can contact detectives at 410-396-2100 or anonymously call the Metro Crime Stoppers tip line at 1-866-7LOCKUP.

Contact Dillon Mullan at dmullan@baltsun.com, 302-842-3818 or @DillonMullan on X.

Officers responded to the 4900 block of Frankford Avenue in the Frankford neighborhood around 5:20 p.m. and found the victim with a gunshot wound. Medics declared him dead at the scene, Baltimore Police said.

Anyone with information can contact detectives at 410-396-2100 or anonymously call the Metro Crime Stoppers tip line at 1-866-7LOCKUP.

Contact Dillon Mullan at dmullan@baltsun.com, 302-842-3818 or @DillonMullan on X.